Former Champion jockey set to hang up his stirrups in Hong Kong.
SportsJoe has to admit that we were mightily sad when Jamie Spencer decided he was calling it a day from racing this year.
The 34 year old Tipperary native announced in August that he was to become a manager with Sheikh Farhad Al Thani’s Qatar racing group and would no longer be in the saddle.
He wrapped up his career on this side of the world on Saturday at Doncaster where he came home second in the opener on ‘Bapak Asmara’ and then came third in the penultimate race of the day on board ‘Dashing Star’.
Speaking after the action on Saturday his agent David Harrison said:
“I haven’t spoken to him in detail about it, but I think he’s going to ride in Hong Kong and I think that might be where he’ll finish (his riding career).
“He’ll probably take a ride here and there before then to keep himself fit and I think he’s planning to go to Barbados for a jockeys’ challenge out there.”
We would hope the former champion jockey in both Ireland and the UK would change his mind but if not we have the memories of his famous wins in the 2011 Ascot Gold Cup on Fame and Glory and the Irish 1000 guineas to savour.
He’s going to be a real loss from the sport and in the interview below we get a bit of a look behind the man who claimed the British flat racing jockey title with 180 wins in 2005.
