Kentucky Derby won in stunning fashion by favourite California Chrome

Early stages in the 140th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, with eventual winner California Chrome in third place. Photograph: Jamie Rhodes/USA Today Sports

California Chrome, a warm favourite, won the 140th Kentucky Derby in brilliant fashion at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

Perfectly ridden by Victor Espinoza, California Chrome pinned back his ears and sprinted clear of his rivals at the top of the stretch to easily win the $2.2m race in Louisville.

Commanding Curve, one of the longshots in the 19-horse field, finished strongly to take second while Danza battled in for third place.

Unbeaten in four starts this season, the modestly-bred California Chrome started as the 5-2 favourite after romping to victories in previous races, including last month's Santa Anita Derby that is one of the key lead-up events to the Run for the Roses.

California Chrome's 77-year-old trainer, Art Sherman, became the oldest person to train the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The attendance at Churchill Downs was announced as 164,906.

The winning owners, Steve Coburn of Nevada and Perry Martin of California, paid only $10,500 for California Chrome – $8,000 to purchase the mare Love the Chase and $2,500 to breed her to the stallion Lucky Pulpit.

Only three horses bred in California had previously won the Kentucky Derby – Morvich (1922), Swaps (1955) and Decidedly (1962)

Kieren Fallon wins 2,000 Guineas on shock victor Night Of Thunder

Kieren Fallon steers the erratic Night Of Thunder to success in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket with Australia, right, in third. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

Kieren Fallon won a dramatic 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on 40-1 outsider Night Of Thunder despite the winner swerving across the track in the closing stages.

It was a fifth colts' Classic success for the jockey and his first in the race for eight years. His mount, who was winning for Richard Hannon in the first year since the trainer took over at his Wiltshire stable from his father, reversed Greenham Stakes form with the favourite Kingman.

Kingman had looked likely to collect the prize when taking up the running in the closing stages but was caught close home by the winner, who he had well behind him in second at Newbury last time. But there was a huge scare for supporters of the eventual winner who veered across the track and nearly into the path of third-placed Australia.

Fallon said: "I thought he'd given it away, but he's a good horse and hopefully he can continue."

An emotional Hannon said: "I didn't have time to enjoy it - I was watching [my other two horses in the race]. But we've always though a lot of Night Of Thunder and he's done it well. We were a bit disappointed with him in the Greenham but today he showed how good he was.

"He gets a mile, no problem, and he settled better today. He pulled a little bit in the Greenham and he's turned the form around with Kingman."

Night Of Thunder now has the option of travelling to The Curragh to contest the Irish 2,000 Guineas on May 24, for which he would need to be supplemented.

Hannon said: "We'll have to talk to Bruce Raymond [racing manager for owner Saeed Manana] but I'd imagine it will be either the Irish Guineas or the St James's Palace at Royal Ascot. Shifting Power ran great to finish fourth and could be a French Derby horse."

The race was an unsatisfactory one as the field split into two groups soon after the start, with the Hannon-trained Toormore moving to the stands' rail under Richard Hughes and Spanish raider Noozhoh Canarias leading the far-side runners, which included the eventual first and second.

Kingman came with a strong run on the outside of the far group and looked like he would justify the high opinion of him, while on the near side Toormore was headed a furlong out, with Australia going on from Hannon's other runner, Shifting Power.

Aidan O'Brien, trainer of Australia, was very pleased with the run of the third home who could hardly have run a better race with the Derby in mind. He said: "[Australia] ran a great race and you have to be delighted with him. We'll talk to [the owners] and they will decide but the Derby trip was never going to be a problem."

Bookmakers retaliate in battle over tax on FOBT high street casinos

Fixed odds betting terminals, known as FOBTs, are commonplace in betting shops all over Britain. Photograph: Islandstock/Alamy

The waiting goes on to discover what, if anything, the Government proposes to do next about the addictive, high-stakes roulette and gaming machines which have created several thousand mini-casinos on our high streets. The pushers, however – they used to be called "bookmakers" – appear to be trying to get their retaliation in first.

In addition to the sound of a virtual roulette ball dropping into a slot every 20 seconds, and the occasional disturbance caused by a player cursing or even attacking a machine after it has sucked in their last pound, betting shop customers have had to put up with another distraction. A petition organised by the Association of British Bookmakers appeared overnight in shops across the country, and many shop managers – no doubt suspecting that their area manager will be totting up numbers and reporting back to head office – have been actively encouraging their customers to sign.

The petition, headed "Enough's Enough", squeezes an impressive mixture of fantasy, paranoia and half-truth into its 205 words. For one thing, it does not actually mention Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. Instead, it includes a claim, without any detail on substance or timing, or evidence to back it up, that "recent Government announcements have put more than 10,000 jobs and 2,300 shops at immediate risk".

There is mention too of a punter's "right to have a bet", though strangely this basic freedom does not seem to appear in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Which is a pity, because if it did, the right to have a decent bet accepted at the advertised price without restriction might be in there as well.

But the laager mentality which now grips the high-street gamblingindustry on the FOBT issue is perhaps best summed up by this sentence: "As long as our customers gamble responsibly," the petition says, "we [the ABB] believe you should be free to enjoy your leisure time as you choose without being demonised."

Since when has anyone been demonising the punters? It is the gaming machines and the businesses which use them to extract easy, risk-free cash from local communities, often those that can least afford it, that are loathed and despised. The politicians and civil servants who between them decided to replace the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act with a one-size-fits-all Gambling Act should be ashamed of themselves too. It was this gross stupidity which allowed roulette out of the casino and on to the high street in the first place. Punters being demonised? Are they serious?

In a sense, the ABB's petition is encouraging, since it suggests that eight years mainlining easy cash has addled their brains. They do not seem able to understand the opposition to their move from traditional betting into hard gaming, never mind mount any credible defence. They were delighted to sow the wind when the politicians handed them a licence to print money. Now here comes the twister. This has the potential to be a moment of weakness which racing could exploit to the full.

The sport has been insisting it wants a commercial replacement for the statutory Levy system pretty much since the Levy arrived in the 1960s. Under such a system, the bookmakers would not be partners, but the hired help that processes the income from betting and takes a commission for doing so.

Severe restriction of the stakes on FOBTs or, better still, banishing roulette back to the casinos altogether would focus the minds of both CEOs and shareholders on getting their slice of the action from of the best betting medium ever devised. That would bring the significant and growing revenue from offshore betting, which is beyond the reach of the Levy, into play.

Sadly Paul Bittar, the British Horseracing Authority's chief executive, seems to have studied the landscape and the gambling industry's circled wagons, and decided that inside firing out is the best place to be. It would be in the better long-term interests of both the racing and bookmaking industries if Bittar and the BHA remained outside, offering instead a possible route towards an honourable surrender.

Aidan O'Brien's Australia tantalises as Flat season jumps into unknown

2,000 Guineas hope Toormore with Richard Hannon, the trainer who could have the whip hand over Aidan O'Brien in 2014. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images

From Sandown via Punchestown to Newmarket and Chester, the transition from jumping to the Flat over the next two weeks will be all but seamless. There are no fewer than 12 Grade One National Hunt contests at Punchestown's festival meeting between Tuesday and Saturday, when the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket will be the first Group One of the British Flat season, and it can be difficult to stop and reflect when there is always so much to anticipate.

The 2013-2014 jumps campaign did not leave a long sequence of images etched on the memory as some have done in recent years, though the afternoon at Towcester in early November when Tony McCoy rode the 4,000th winner of his career stands out as a moment when racing, and a fair proportion of the general public too, paused to appreciate one of the truly extraordinary sporting careers.

Nor could it have had a more emblematic horse of the year than Sire De Grugy, who received the majority of votes in an online poll conducted by the Racing Post to beat a field which included Quevega, who beat Golden Miller's record of five straight wins at the Festival when she took the Mares' Hurdle for the sixth year in a row.

Sire De Grugy had a Zelig-like ability to be there at the season's pivotal moments. First, he emerged as the winner when Sprinter Sacre pulled up on his first, and as it turned out only, start of the season at Kempton on 27 December. Then, 24 hours after the death of Our Conor in the Champion Hurdle had cast a long shadow over the first day at Cheltenham, his victory in the Queen Mother Champion Chase was one that everyone could celebrate. The weighing room cleared to acknowledge Jamie Moore's first Festival winner, and the mood of the entire meeting was changed in an instant.

Sire De Grugy's victory in Saturday's Celebration Chase at Sandown was his fourth Grade One in a season which seemed to promise little more than a string of second places behind Sprinter Sacre at its outset. Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson dominated the trainers' championship, while Willie Mullins made it a three-cornered fight at the festivals, but Sire De Grugy and Pineau De Re, who took the Grand National for Dr Richard Newland's tiny 12-horse yard, were the sort of horses and stories that fire the enthusiasm of many National Hunt fans in the first place.

Flat racing, meanwhile, now offers the prospect of four Classics and Royal Ascot in the space of eight weeks. Technically, of course, the 2014 turf season is already more than a month old, with both the Craven and Greenham meetings in the book, but it is Guineas weekend, rather than the Craven, which feels ever more like the point at which the campaign really starts.

The 2,000 Guineas in particular looks like an outstanding and fascinating renewal, both in terms of its horses and its people. Kingman, Kingston Hill and Toormore are all unbeaten, while Australia – by a Derby winner out of an Oaks winner – has, like a fair few before him, been described by Aidan O'Brien as possibly the best he has trained.

A personal view is that Australia is the key horse in the field, because he is priced on a mixture of hope and hype with surprisingly little in the book to back it up, and that seems to feed into other markets too. He might be a better horse than Galileo, George Washington, High Chaparral and company, but he still has a huge amount to prove.

O'Brien won the first four Classics in 2012 but still could not beat John Gosden – who saddled two Group One winners all season – to the trainers' championship. Yet he is joint-favourite for the title with Richard Hannon, who has taken over from his father Richard Hannon Sr, the champion in three of the last four seasons.

With the strings in the major yards increasing all the time, it becomes ever more difficult even for a trainer of O'Brien's immense talent to take the title with just a handful of Group winners. Hannon sends Toormore to the Guineas with a live chance and has several top-class older horses plus, above all, a weight of numbers that no other yard can match. He remains odds-against at 11-8 for the trainers' title, a bet that can provide a regular interest throughout the season with every prospect of a payout at the end.

Ryan Moore, meanwhile, also looks big at evens in what is surely a two-runner race with Richard Hughes for the jockeys' title. Hughes was less than 20 winners clear last time around and his injury in Dubai has given Moore a head-start of similar proportions this time. Moore is riding as reliably and impeccably as ever, and also makes plenty of appeal at the prices to finish the Flat season as champion once again

Miss France wins 1,000 Guineas but Kieren Fallon steals Derby spotlight

Miss France and Maxime Guyon, in pale blue sleeves, winning the Qipco 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket. Photograph: Matthew Webb/Rex

André Fabre completed the set of English Classics on the Rowley Mile here on Sunday as Miss France took the 1,000 Guineas ahead of Lightning Thunder and Ihtimal, but it was Kieren Fallon who emerged from Guineas weekend as the biggest winner, and with another high-profile engagement to anticipate as the Flat season moves on towards Epsom.

Fallon, who won the 2,000 Guineas on Night Of Thunder on Saturday took a minor race on Elite Gardens for Godolphin's Saeed bin Suroor, and the trainer later confirmed that Fallon will take over from Silvestre de Sousa on True Story, a live contender for the Derby, when he runs in the Dante Stakes at York next week.

"Kieren is one of the best jockeys," Suroor said after Elite Gardens' victory. "I'm happy to give him a chance in all the big races. He rode True Story today on the gallops and he gave me good information. He's going to ride him in the Dante."

De Sousa has been Suroor's principal jockey since Frankie Dettori lost his job as Godolphin's No1 rider in the autumn of 2012, and he rode the trainer's African Story to win the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest race, in March. He also rode True Story to an impressive success in the Fielden Stakes at Newmarket's Craven meeting in April, but the news that Fallon will replace him in the Dante suggests that Godolphin are already thinking two steps ahead to Epsom, and want to secure a jockey whose record at the demanding downland track is second to none.

It also suggests that De Sousa can no longer be sure of the ride on Suroor's main contender for a major race. While Godolphin has adopted a loose structure with regard to riding arrangements since Dettori's departure, with no overall No1 jockey, Fallon has quickly become a significant part of Suroor's operation and now seems to be the rider among the Godolphin team whose star is on the ascendant.

Fallon has won the Derby four times, and has talked in the past of an affinity he feels for the track as similar to that of Dettori's love for Ascot. The likelihood that he will be aboard True Story at Epsom to attract the attention of punters.

Miss France, an impressive winner of the Oh So Sharp Stakes at Newmarket last season, was the winter favourite for the 1,000 Guineas but could finish only sixth on her seasonal debut last month. Sent off at 7-1 on Sunday, she appreciated a stronger pace in the Classic and took the lead about a furlong out under Maxime Guyon before holding the late charge of Lightning Thunder by a neck. Ihtimal, trained by Suroor and ridden by De Sousa, was third.

"It was the exact opposite of the way I wanted [her to] be ridden, but it worked," Fabre said. "[Her seasonal debut] was not a race, anything but a race. I was waiting for her morning work [afterwards] and I got very confident when she worked very well in the morning. She will go further, it's not a problem and she will go for the Prix de Diane [French Oaks]."

Asked whether he was pleased to have completed a full set of all five English Classics, Fabre said: "It doesn't mean anything, it's just another racing day. I'm just happy and it's a solved problem."

A significant contender for the Oaks at Epsom in early June emerged in the Pretty Polly Stakes as Taghrooda, already prominent in the ante-post betting following her maiden success here last season, stormed six lengths clear of her field and is now top-priced at 3-1 for the Classic on 6 June.

"She wants a mile and a half now," John Gosden said, and Taghrooda will go straight to Epsom. "We can always take her to Epsom and have a look around as they have an open day," Gosden added, "and her father [Sea The Stars] got around there no problem."

Rafael Nadal's Barcelona Open winning streak ended by Nicolás Almagro

Rafael Nadal's quarter-final defeat to Nicolás Almagro was his first Barcelona Open loss since his debut as a 15-year-old in 2003. Photograph: Fotopress/Getty Images

Rafael Nadal's clay-court struggles worsened on Friday as his 41-match winning streak at the Barcelona Open ended with a three-set loss to Nicolás Almagro in the quarter-finals.

Nadal was looking for his ninth title in Barcelona but lost 2-6, 7-6, 6-4 a week after going out in the quarter-finals of the Monte Carlo Masters to David Ferrer. Nadal, widely considered the greatest clay-court player of all time, had not lost in the tournament since his debut as a 15-year-old in 2003, although he did not play in 2010. He had not dropped a set in Barcelona since the 2008 final.

The 20th-ranked Almagro converted his second match point, smashing a forehand down the line for his first career victory over his fellow Spaniard at the 11th attempt. "I had a lot of opportunities in the second set," Nadal said. "I didn't take advantage of break points, so credit goes to him."

After failing to convert any of his five break points in the second set, Nadal missed a return in the tiebreak to give Almagro a 6-5 lead. Almagro followed up with a crosscourt forehand winner to level the match and end Nadal's run of 44 straight sets at the tournament.

Both players were steady on serve until an exchange of breaks made it 4-4 in the third, and Nadal then sent a shot long to be broken again and give Almagro a chance to serve for the match. Nadal set up two straight chances to break back, but hit a forehand long and then sent a smash into the net with Almagro out of position.

Nadal then saved the first match point when Almagro's backhand flew wide. But the underdog used a serve-and-volley to save a third break point of the game before Nadal's long return set up the second match point.

Nadal had not been eliminated this early in back-to-back clay-court tournaments since 2004, when as an 18-year-old he also failed to get past the quarter-finals in Stuttgart and Bastad.

"This is an important win for my career," said Almagro, who celebrated wildly. He will face Santiago Giraldo in Saturday's semi-final after Philipp Kohlschreiber retired with an injury while trailing 6-4, 4-3.

Earlier, Kei Nishikori of Japan and Ernests Gulbis of Latvia overpowered opponents to set up a meeting in the other semi-final. The fourth-seeded Nishikori continued his good run since returning from a groin injury with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Marin Cilic of Croatia, while the ninth-seeded Gulbis dismissed Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia 6-1, 6-4. Gulbis saved all five break points against Gabashvili, who had knocked out the fifth-ranked Ferrer.

Andy Murray's Wimbledon seeding will not be harmed by world ranking drop

Andy Murray has slipped to No8 in the world rankings as he prepares to defend his Wimbledon title. Photograph: Hugo Avila/AP

Andy Murray will be seeded significantly higher than his world ranking of eight when he defends his Wimbledon title, tournament organisers have confirmed.

The Scot has slipped down the ATP rankings, largely as a result of back surgery that has kept him from competing, since becoming the first British man to win Wimbledon for 77 years last July. But the All England Club chairman, Philip Brook, said Wimbledon's seeding system would continue to take into account previous performances on grass and would therefore benefit Murray.

Points are added for achievements in grasscourt tournaments in the past 12 months, with extra points awarded for their best performance in the previous year.

"For Andy Murray, as the winner of Queen's last year and the winner here last year, and a finalist here in 2012, there will be a significant impact on him," Brook said. He added that the seeding system would also have "significant" positive impact on the seven-times champion Roger Federer and last year's beaten finalist, Novak Djokovic.

Link to video: Wimbledon prize money increased to £25m by All England Lawn Tennis Club

The quirks of the Wimbledon seeding system should conspire to save Murray from a difficult draw that could have undermined his chances of retaining his title. At its annual spring press conference to preview the coming championships, Brook said that overall prize fund would increase 10.8% on last year to a total of £25m. The increase is marginally weighted towards those that go out in the early rounds, which Brook said was a recognition of those who needed the extra income most.

The additional prize money for first- round losers, who will now receive £27,000, means that they have received an increase of 135% over the past three years. The All England Club's chief executive, Richard Lewis, denied that the increased payments rewarded failure.

"They have worked hard to get here for 12 months either through their world ranking or through qualifying. Being in a main draw of a grand slam means they are world-class players," he said. "The costs and expenses involved in being a top-100 player are huge and while they are not pleading poverty they are not making huge sums of money for world-class athletes."

The men's and women's singles champions will receive £1.76m each, an increase of 10% on 2013 and an overall rise of 60% over three years.

Brook confirmed that plans to revamp the grounds, partly funded by a new £100m Centre Court debenture scheme, were on track. Courts 14 and 15 will be out of action this year due to continuing work to create new facilities beneath them. He said the new roof on No1 court, due to be finished by 2019, would be based on the design of the Centre Court roof introduced five years ago and that the redesign would increase capacity by 900.

Brook also unveiled a string of new international broadcast deals and a revamped mobile phone app, claiming that the appeal of the tournament around the world continued to grow.

The AELTC said it had not yet received any approach for a wild card from Marion Bartoli, last year's women's champion who retired in August, amid persistent speculation she may return. "The rumours in France have not reached London yet, so we'll wait and see," said Brook.