If we were to highlight the biggest change or breakthrough of 2025, a front runner would surely have to be the continued ascent of AI in all of its forms. Whether we consider the comedic yet iconic images of how well ai video can depict Will Smith eating spaghetti, or instead how it’s improved over the year with regard to detailed answers to questions and less ‘hallucinations’ (basically when ai blags it), it’s clearly a technology that is going from strength to strength.
One aspect of ai that should be of interest to those who enjoy having a flutter is the predictive side of things, such as AI football tips. In these scenarios you’re basically plugged into an AI system that has collated a massive amount of match and player data and is able to engage in advanced decisions making based on everything that it has ‘under the bonnet’ so to speak. Many of the sites that offer ai tips, proudly display their win rate, profit margin, ROI and tips won over time. Returns can be impressive because so much data is analysed during these predictions that the suggestions to punters are bound to have a level of rationale to them.
Sites that use AI in this manner often offer individual team analysis (how attacking or defensive a team may be when compared to others) , detail basic stats too such as games played, won, lost, information on rivals, and offer bet suggestions based on all of this info. Just a year back, you wouldn’t have been getting anything beyond the basics in terms of analysis and info, but that is certainly changing and it’s better to be at the forefront of any change than to be the last hearing about it. Knowledge is power as they say, and so keep an open mind as to what might elevate your betting bank.
Of course football isn’t the only sport to benefit from ai analysis either. Horse Racing AI tips are also out there, where again, there is a breakdown of a race, or a horse based on form, strengths, weaknesses, the going, and conclusions reached about how best to apply this knowledge to a bet or multiple bets. It certainly takes a lot of work out of the process of betting and coming to quick yet meaningful conclusions. Where betting is concerned everyone is looking for an edge, and at this moment in time, using AI in a pointed and meaingful ways is definitely a way to separate yourself from the crowd.
Until 2010, the record for longest match in professional tennis history was a first round match between Frenchmen Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clément at the French Open in 2004; Santoro eventually won 4-6, 3-6, 7-6, 6-3, 16-14 after six hours and 33 minutes. However, that record was beaten, hands down, by another first round match, between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahuf at the Wimbledon Championships in 2010.
Played over three days on Court 18, the match lasted eleven hours and five minutes in total, with Isner eventually winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68, making it the longest match both in terms of elapsed time and games played. In fact, the final set alone lasted eight hours and eleven minutes or, in other words, one hour and 38 minutes longer than the Santoro/Clément match. On the third day, played resumed in the fifth set at 59-59, to the amusement of the umpire and spectators, and continued until Isner broke serve in the 138th game to complete a remarkable victory. Both players were presented with crystal glasses and a commemorative plaque was erected courtside to mark their achievement.
In 2018, Isner was also involved in the second longest match in professional history, again at the Wimbledon Championships, where he eventually lost 6-7. 7-6, 7-6, 4-6, 24-26 to South African Kevin Anderson in a men’s singles sem-final lasting six hours and 35 minutes. The following October, the All England Lawn Tennis Club announced that, from 2019, tie-breaks would be played at 12-12 in the final set to prevent such marathon matches.
Rea more about the Longest Tennis Match in History
Famously trained by the late Donald ‘Ginger’ McCain on the sands of Southport Beach on Merseyside, northwest England, Red Rum won the Grand National for the first time in 1973. On that occasion, ridden by Brian Fletcher, Red Rum overhauled long-time leader, Crisp, who had been thirty lengths clear at one stage, in the dying strides to win by three-quarters of a length in a course record time of 9 minutes and 1.9 seconds.
Red Rum and Fletcher returned to Aintree for another crack at the celebrated steeplechase in 1974 and duly won again. Despite the welter burden of twelve stone, Red Rum came home seven lengths ahead of his nearest rival, L’Escargot. In so doing, he became the first horse since Reynoldstown, in 1936, to record back-to-back wins in the Grand National and – notwithstanding subsequent reductions in the maximum weight carried – remains the only horse since World War II to carry such a weight to victory. Red Rum finished second in the 1975 and 1976 renewals of the Grand National, in 1975 under Brian Fletcher and in 1976 under Tommy Stack, who replaced Fletcher after the latter made disparaging comments to the press about Red Rum and was informed by McCain that he would not be riding the horse again.
Stack was once again aboard Red Rum when he lined up, as a twelve-year-old, for the 1977 Grand National. Generally regarded as past his prime, Red Rum was, nonetheless, saddled with top-weight once again, albeit just eleven stone and eight pounds, and was sent off joint-second favourite at 9/1. He took the lead at the twenty-second fence, Becher’s Brook on the second circuit, following the departure of favourite Andy Pandy, and stormed home to his unprecedented third win in the race, twenty-five lengths clear of his nearest rival.