Ronnie O’Sullivan: the greatest snooker player who ever ran

I got a message from Liam Moggan last weekend telling me how much he was looking forward to the championship. Not the football or the hurling, the snooker, which he said is the greatest show on earth and all arguments to the contrary will be ignored.

Coming from him these are strong words, Moggan widely regarded as one of the most influential and knowledgeable coaches across all Irish sport before his semi-retirement a few years back. The coach’s coach, as he was referred to, and people listened because he invariably knew what he was talking about.

Still, snooker is hardly his main game, although he was the brains behind Ken Doherty’s return to his finest form in 2003, three years later ranked number two in the world.

As sporting events go, it’s not that long since matchday for many revolved around cigarettes and alcohol and never feats of any great athleticism. There was no doping per se – only occasionally some Class A drugs.

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It is a different game these days and any time Ronnie O’Sullivan enters The Crucible you get that sense of exactly what Moggan is talking about here.

At age 46 and 38 major titles later he’s still playing some of the best snooker of his life with rarely a dull moment – and whether or not O’Sullivan succeeds in winning that record-equalling seventh World title he remains one of the most enduringly fascinating competitors across any sporting arena.

You only need to listen to him: "I probably wasn't born to play snooker, but I was born to do something with a ball," O'Sullivan said after coming from 3-0 down to beat David Gilbert 10-5 in round one.

“I just wish it would have been another sport where my temperament would have been suited to it. I find snooker challenging.

"It is like Gladiator. Russell Crowe has a hole in his arm and knows he is going to die, but you just have to find a way. That is what winners and gladiators do. I suppose when you're an old granddad like me, you draw on your experiences, whatever it is what you've learned."

He's correct about being a granddad, has always been open about his own temperament like that too; it's just three years since he made one of the greatest first round exits in the history of World snooker, losing 10-8 to Liam Cahill, the first-ever amateur to make it through qualifying.

After he won his sixth title the following year, he described himself as the king of sabotage, that even in victory he was never far from despair.

"I remembered every time I win a big tournament it puts me on a low, but I've accepted it, it's just part of any high," he told Simon Hattenstone in the Guardian.

He's already making a record-equalling 30th appearance in Sheffield, and it was interesting to hear Doherty credit O'Sullivan earlier this week for his success at The Crucible 25 years ago, after the two players agreed to practice against each other at the Ilford Snooker Centre.

That was the same championship where O’Sullivan first showcased his unquestionable genius with cue in hand, taking only five minutes and 20 seconds – later corrected to five minutes and eight seconds – to reach the maximum break of 147, a feat of serious athleticism.

Natural high

Indeed I’m here to argue one of the greatest things about O’Sullivan is that he is a serious athlete to boot.

He titled his 2013 autobiography Running because by then it had become his obsession in life, more so than snooker, and in that same interview with Hattenstone in 2020 he references Joshua Cheptegei from Uganda, the world record holder for 5,000m and 10,000m on the track.

How many snooker players know of Joshua Cheptegei?

“I’ve never seen Cheptegei look unhappy. How can you look unhappy after a 26-mile run? Running just gives you a natural high. I can run for an hour, 7.45- to 8-minute miling. Running is my drug.”

O’Sullivan knows what he’s talking about here too; in 1992, the year he turned professional at age 16, his father Ronnie senior was jailed for murder; four years later his mother Maria was jailed for tax evasion.

Around that same time recreational drugs were his preference, and in 1998 he was stripped of his Irish Masters title when he tested positive for cannabis, and two years later he ended up in the Priory.

After running became his drug things proved similarly addictive. By 2008 he’d lowered his 10km best to 34:54, and three years ago he told Runner’s World “there’s no feeling like ticking along at 6:30-minute mile, in the forest, up and down the hills, it’s just a great way to start the day, that, to me, is proper running”.

O’Sullivan is still capable of minor sabotage around the snooker arena, following up his 2020 title with the claim the only reason older players like himself were still winning is because the standard of the younger players is so bad, that he’d have to lose an arm and a leg to fall out of the top 50.

He's repeatedly claimed too that most of the time he'd rather be out running somewhere around his local Epping Forest in Essex than be playing at a snooker tournament. That, as any distance runner knows, is as much about a head cleansing exercise, possibly where he got the idea for the three crime novels he's also co-written.

Whether or not he pockets another half a million quid by the end of this championship, there’s no arguing O’Sullivan has helped snooker clean up a part of its act with his healthier lifestyle away from the table.

He's not alone on that front either; Neil Robertson is also fancied to win his second title, 12 years after his first, and the 40-year-old Australian popped up on my Twitter feed earlier this week under Great Vegan Athletes, having gone completely green since 2014.

O’Sullivan isn’t for turning anytime soon either.

“Running for me is the perfect thing ’cos they are just nice people. It’s not like cycling, where you’ve got to spend £10,000 on a bike. You get a lot of arseholes in that sport because they’ve got money and they think money is the all-important thing. I can’t stand people like that. You don’t get them type of people in the running world.”

Spoken like the greatest snooker player who ever ran.