SPAIN SET TO REIGN
PHOENIX OF SPAIN has rock-solid credentials to add to his Irish 2,000 Guineas success and take the lead in his private head- to- head with Too Darn Hot.
When the pair met in the Group 2 Champagne Stakes on Doncaster’s St Leger undercard last September, it was star Too Darn Hot two-year-old who held sway by a length and three-quarters.
But Phoenix Of Spain, who came within a head of subsequent 2,000 Guineas winner Magna Grecia in the Group 1 Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster the following month, gained his revenge when clashing with Too Darn Hot in the Irish Guineas at the Curragh 24 days ago.
Sent off at 16- 1, the Charlie Hills-trained grey and Jamie Spencer made all the running for a threelength supremacy over his rival, with Newmarket Skardu third claiming fourth place, and French Van Guineas sixth Beethoven
returning in seventh.
Much has been made of Too Darn Hot’s troubled spring, but life wasn’t a bowl of cherries for Phoenix Of Spain during the turf season’s early weeks, either.
Both horses were forced to miss the Guineas at Newmarket by training issues and Hills expects his colt, for whom a rainsoftened racing surface is unlikely to be a problem, to have benefited from his first race of 2019. Fox Champion,
Both who landed the Group 2 German 2,000 Guineas on his latest start, and Sandown’s Listed Heron King Of Stakes victor Comedy
are open to further progress as they compete at the highest level for the first time. Shaman
had Van Beethoven in his wake when second to Persian King in the Poule d’Essai des Pou lains at Longchamp and enters the picture on that score.