Running: The Autobiography

RUNNING

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Ronnie O’Sullivan

with Simon Hattenstone

To Lily and little Ronnie, with all my love

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the following: Mum, Dad and Danielle, Lily and little Ronnie, Laila for their love and support; Damien Hirst, Antony Genn, Sylvia, Irish Chris, Scouse John and Little T for being in my corner; Jimmy White and Stephen Hendry for showing me the way; Django and Sonny for their management skills; the farm and the pigs for keeping me busy and sane; Tracey Alexandrou, Chris Davies, Terry Davies, Barry Elwell, Amanda, Mark, Terry McCarthy, David Webb, Alan, Sian, Claire, Jason Ward for being the best of mates: the brilliant Dr Steve Peters for teaching me how to cope; agent extraordinaire Jonny Geller, Alan Samson and Lucinda McNeile for their editing skills; and Simon Hattenstone for his friendship, ability to get into my head and for being as bonkers as me (it takes one to know one).

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Me when I was little Ronnie and Dad … Dad has been a powerful presence in my life … and a powerful absence. When he went down for murder, I was in pieces.

Me and Mum … When we went into business together, I said to Mum, whatever I earn and whatever you earn we’ll pool together.

With Stephen Hendry back in 1996 when we both looked like kids … for me, Hendry is the greatest player ever. When we fell out it hurt, but it was my fault. (Louisa Buller/PA)

2004 … winning the World Championship and celebrating with a pair of Dracula teeth. Everyone thought it was a tribute to Ray ‘Dracula’ Reardon, but I’d promised my mate Scouse John I’d stick ’em in if I ever won the World again. (Rui Vieira/PA)

Me with six-time world champion Ray Reardon … I love Ray, he’s the funniest man I ever met and a great coach, but I started playing too cautiously. (Trevor Smith Photography)

The great snooker cover-up … 2005, UK Championship, I put the wet towel over my head because I couldn’t bear watching Mark King play. (Eric Whitehead)

Giving Lil a kiss after winning the World Championship in 2008 – my third world title, and a lovely feeling. (Getty)

Me and the trophy in 2008. I was so gaunt everyone asked if I was ill, but I was just super fit. (Anna Gowthorpe/PA)

Me and little Ronnie in 2012. To go from barely seeing the kids to having my little boy sharing that moment with me was just perfect. It couldn’t get any better. (Getty)

Me and little Ronnie 2013. What a way to cap off the craziest year in my snooker life. After my self-imposed exile, I came back and won the World Championship for the fifth time. (Rex)

Me, Sylvia, Damien and little Ron partying after I won the 2013 Worlds – Sylv is Damien’s assistant and part of the gang.

Me and Damien Hirst, giving the world the finger. He makes me look almost civilised!

Running … my religion, my belief system, my way of keeping calm. (Mel Fordham)

Me and my personal trainer Tracey Alexandrou … she’s a brilliant athlete and has been a constant in my life. Tracey gives it me straight. If I’m not fit, she won’t pretend otherwise.

At the farm … I loved working there during my year away from snooker, but cleaning out the pigsties didn’t half put me off my ham. (Tom Jenkins)

On my way to victory in the Lactic Rush assault course … it was bloody murder, but I was determined, especially after I heard one fella shout out to his mate, ‘You can’t let a snooker player beat you.’ (Mel Fordham)

Running in Birmingham with the great Ethiopian Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m gold medallist Tirunesh Dibaba. She couldn’t believe the miles I was putting in. (Alan Walter)

Me, Chris Davies, his family and friends. They promised me I’d do my PB in France and I did.

Me and Chris Davies and his wife Amanda in France. All the family are incredible runners, and I loved the fact that I became part of their extended family. Happy days.

At Woodford Green athletics club with Alan Rugg, Barry Elwell, Bernadine Pritchett and Terry McCarthy … none of them cared that I played snooker, and most of them didn’t even know. They just accepted me as a runner. (Tom Jenkins)

Me, Chris Davies’s dad Terry and his mum Lyn in France … we were staying in a hotel for £18 a night, running every day, eating pizzas, talking about running, and I thought I’d cracked life.

Love this pic … me, Lil and little Ronnie. Everything that makes life worthwhile. I took my year off the game to make sure I could get quality time with the kids.

Me, Damien and Irish Chris … vital men in my corner. Lovely fellas as well.

I’ll tell Irish Chris how shit I think I really am at snooker and he just looks at me as if I’m mad. That’s friendship! But here we are with a nice little world trophy.

In the first half of my career, it was drink and drugs that kept me on the straight and narrow – crazy though that sounds. This time round, it’s been the running that’s kept my head straight. Or at least as straight as mine will ever be. (Tom Jenkins)

PROLOGUE

I wasn’t sure what to call this book. It was a choice between ‘My Year Out’, ‘The Comeback Kid’ and ‘Running’. The first two are pretty self-explanatory – I took a year out for reasons I’ve not gone into until now after I won the World Championship in May 2012 and returned in May 2013 to win it again. It was the first time I’ve won successive Worlds in my career, and I was the first player to do so since Stephen Hendry, whom I regard as the greatest ever, did so in 1997. Happy days.

But in the end I opted for
Running
because this book is about what has sustained me through the second half of my career. In the first half, it was more drink, drugs and Prozac that kept me on the straight and narrow – crazy though that sounds. This time round, with the not so odd exception, it’s been the running that’s kept my head straight. Or at least as straight as a head like mine will ever be. It can’t have done me too much harm, if I’m being objective about it. When I wrote my first book 12 years ago I was 25 and I’d just won my first World Championship. Nobody expected me to take that long to win it – with the possible exception of me. Until then I’d become known as the greatest snooker player never to have won the World Championship. And, believe me, that was a big old albatross to hang round my neck.

I was relieved when I finally won it, but there was always the worry that, despite the other big tournaments I’d won, when it came to the Worlds I’d be a one-hit wonder. Now I’ve won five, and only Steve Davis and Ray Reardon with six and Hendry with seven have won more. Despite all my talk of retiring (and whatever people think, it’s not just talk – if I tell people I’m getting out, I believe it when I say it) I still reckon I could overtake their records. This year at Sheffield I overtook Hendry for the number of centuries made at the Crucible in the final against Barry Hawkins (131), and that was a great feeling. I also scored six centuries in that final, another record. So slowly but surely I am writing my way into snooker’s history books.

Without running, I reckon I would have given up on the game a long time ago. Running is my religion, my belief system, my way of keeping calm. Running is painful and horribly physical, but it’s also probably the nearest I get to a spiritual high. I want to share my running buzz with everyone – those of you who are already on the buzz will hopefully recognise what I’m writing about; there might even be the odd bit of decent advice here. And it might encourage others to get out in the fresh air, put your foot down and get a serotonin boost.

It made sense to me to write a book about running – not only is it my hobby/obsession, but it’s been a recurrent theme in my life. As the sports psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters will tell you, I’ve spent loads of my life running away from shit, and running to shit – be it drink, drugs, bad people, good people, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, running clubs, family, food, TV cameras, the snooker authorities, my own demons, you name it.

But, of course, this book is also about snooker – my game. The sport that I sometimes detest so much I can’t bear to look at a cue; the sport that has been the love of my life. More than
anything, the book documents the year between May 2012 and 2013 – even by my standards the craziest 12 months of my life. In 2012, I won the World Championship for the fourth time. It was the greatest feeling ever at the end – my son, little Ronnie, came to join me on the stage at the Crucible and I threw him in the air, the roars were going up and it was just pure bliss. Straight after I announced I was quitting the game, and I did – for 11 months. Then I agreed to come back for the World Championship to defend my crown. I don’t really know what I thought I was going to achieve – after all, nobody had successfully defended the title since Hendry in the 1990s. I’d played one competitive match the whole season, my ranking had slipped down to 29th in the world, and even though they still made me one of the favourites I thought that was just crazy. Until I went into practice six weeks before the tournament started, I’d barely hit a ball all year.

Throughout Sheffield 2013 people asked me why I’d quit, why I was back, and though dribs and drabs emerged I knew I couldn’t tell the story properly in a few sound bites. Some of them sounded daft or unconvincing in an ‘Ah, that’s just Ronnie’ way – when I said I’d come back to pay the kids’ school bills everybody laughed and said, how could you not have money for that? They thought I was joking. But I wasn’t. So this book is to set the record straight.

What I want to do is to give an insight into a sportsman’s life, and show how difficult it can be to balance family and professional life. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t asking for your sympathy – I know just how lucky I am to be gifted, to have a huge following and to be able to make money and travel the world playing the game that I love (when I’m not hating it that is). And, yes, in one way it is a very glamorous life. But sometimes, if things don’t work out as you’d hoped in your private
life, it becomes impossible to keep a happy balance between family and work, and sometimes you’re forced into choosing one ahead of the other.