Colin Osborne

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Colin Osborne

Personal information
Nickname	The Wizard
Date of birth	June 19, 1975 (1975-06-19) (age 32)
Place of birth	Middlesbrough,
Home town	Derby,
Darts information
Playing darts since
Darts	24g Tungsten, contender series
Walk-on music	Paranoid by Black Sabbath
Organisation (see split in darts)
PDC	since 2005
Current World Ranking	18
PDC Majors - Best Performances
World Ch'ship	QF 2007
UK Open	SF 2007
Desert Classic	Last 16 2007
Other Televised PDC events - Best Performances
Other Tournament Wins
Tournament	Years
Sheppey Darts Classic ^[1]	2007
Infobox last updated on: February 17, 2008.

Colin Osborne (born 19 June 1975) is an English darts player who was born in Middlesbrough and is nicknamed The Wizard. He is also known in the circuit, most notably by commentator Sid Waddell as Ozzy, in reference to The Wizard of Oz and to rock singer Ozzy Osbourne. Due to the latter, he uses the song Paranoid by Ozzy's band Black Sabbath as his walk-on.

Osborne has won one PDC Tour Event (the Sheppey Classic in 2006) and reached the latter stages of several other PDC Pro Tour events including the semi-finals of the Irish Masters and the Bobby Bourne Memorial in Blackpool in 2006. He was also runner-up at the Open Holland to Michael Van Gerwen in 2006.

He managed to hit two perfect nine dart finishes in 2005. First in the Players Championship in the Isle of Wight and a second one at the non-televised qualifying rounds for the 2005 Stan James World Matchplay.

On his World Championship debut in 2007, Osborne reached the quarter finals where he was beaten 5-4 by Andy Jenkins.

This great performance was followed by an even better one at the 2007 Blue Square UK Open, where he beat Michael van Gerwen and Mervyn King as he reached the semi-final only to be beaten 11-10 in a thriller against Vincent van der Voort, who had only recently joined the PDC after switching from the BDO. He followed this success with victory against James Wade in Las Vegas, only to lose to Peter Manley in the Last 16.

His encouraging performances has seen him gain sponsorship from darts manufacturers Unicorn who rate him as one of their "contenders" brand as possible stars of the future along with Mick McGowan, Andy Hamilton, Barrie Bates and training partner James Wade.

[edit] Outside darts

Colin is a former representative of the English table tennis team. He also is a former yo-yo champion and enjoys golf and snooker.

Colin now lives in Derby, where for about 18 months he was the landlord of the Greyhound pub, Village Street along with his wife Sarah. They have two young children Colin and Alfie.