Ranco Uttoxeter Runner

There are five meetings taking place this afternoon with flat cards from Redcar and Haydock, an all-weather flat fixture from Newcastle and jumps meetings from Fakenham and Uttoxeter.  David has one runner today as Ranco contests the 2m handicap hurdle at Uttoxeter at 4.15pm.  A winner on the flat for the stable, his profile has been a little in and out over hurdles, but he produced a very good performance when runner-up at Warwick in June behind a subsequent three-time winner.  A reproduction of that effort would give him every chance and he looks to have each-way claims with conditional jockey Fergus Gillard claiming 3lbs off his back.

The status quo was maintained in the flat jockeys' championship yesterday with Oisin Murphy and William Buick riding a winner each at Chelmsford last night.  Murphy remains two ahead with just today and tomorrow's action left to decide the title.

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Ronnie O'Sullivan's turbulent time in the Northern Ireland snooker tournament came to an abrupt end yesterday when he was beaten 4-3 by Yan Bingtao in the third round.  Judd Trump won through against Jimmy Robertson in a final frame decider to remain on course for a fourth successive title.  Meanwhile, John Higgins came from 3-0 down to beat Mark Williams and Shaun Murphy looked in good touch as he beat Stuart Bingham 4-1.

British tennis certainly seems to be in a good place at the moment, even though Andy Murray shows little sign of ever recapturing his Grand Slam winning form.  Cameron Norrie won his quarter final match last night 6-0 6-2 against Diego Schwartzman in the Indian Wells tournament (the biggest on the circuit outside of the Grand Slams) and will now usurp Dan Evans as British number one.  He will now face world number 28 Grigor Dimitrov in the semi's.

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The kids have been throwing Scrabble tiles at each other again.  It is all fun and games until someone loses an i