Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
22-year-old Wu Yize became the world's latest snooker champion on Monday evening, continuing China's winning streak in the sport. Wu has announced his plans for the prize money and he has received a warm welcome back home overnight. Fact-check editor at the Journal and big snooker fan Stephen McDermott is with me and Manya Kutse, who is editor of Eye on Digital China, are with me on the line.
Stephen, I'll come to you because there's a really interesting backstory here today. to this new champion, Wu. Tell us a bit about him.
Yeah, hey, Clare.
Chapter 2: Who is Wu Yize and what is his significance in snooker?
Yeah, you mentioned there he's only 22 years old, like really young. He's the second ever, or second youngest ever world champion after Stephen Hendry, who I think a lot of people who are familiar with snooker might know. But yeah, this guy, he only turned professional in 2021. He came from China. He's from Lanzhou, which is a city in the northwest of China. And
A few years ago, he decided, I'm going to drop out of school. I'm going to go over to the UK. We're kind of the home of snooker and practice my game there and hope I'm kind of making pro and eventually becoming world champion, which is what he's done.
Chapter 3: What are Wu Yize's plans for his prize money?
You know, he came over with his dad and his nan stayed in China. She had kind of health issues while she was over there as well. And in a victory speech the other night, he kind of thanked both his parents for always having his back. So yeah, it's really, really interesting.
Such a young guy and to make that commitment at such a young age is a huge thing to come halfway across the world to eventually become world champion.
And there was a massive turnout for him when he went back to his hometown in China. You know, thousands of people turned out. I was listening to a BBC report earlier this morning that said he seemed slightly uncomfortable, which for, you know, a 22-year-old lad probably makes sense. But snooker in China is just huge now, isn't it? And this is going to propel it into the stratosphere.
Yeah it's taken off I mean kind of the last 20 years or so but I mean like even now you know you look at the world rankings the top 16 is generally where it's at and there's currently five players including Wu in that top 16 you know there was this guy called Bing Junwei he started it all off and he's kind of seen as like the main guy who's brought snooker mainstream in China so he's been around for the past 20 years or so and
He had a couple of big victories, and then the Chinese government heavily invested in the sport. There's talk now of opening this big arena in China with a thousand tables. I don't even know if there's a thousand tables in Ireland or the UK, and they're talking about opening one place that's there. Hundreds of thousands of people play it over there every day.
It's shown on the state broadcast of the World Championships and stuff like that. It's a really captivating audience over there, and it's seen as where the sport is going to grow.
And it's a bit of a rag to riches story for Woo, isn't it? I mean, you mentioned that he moved to the UK with his dad. They were staying in a bed-sit type place that had no window. They'd sold everything up to make the move. And now he's just one half a million pounds.
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Chapter 4: How did Wu Yize rise to become a world champion?
Yeah, half a million pounds from his victory on Monday, but I'm just looking at the one-year rankings. Snooker measured these world rankings based on prize money. He's won 860 grand over the past year, so he's nearly a millionaire from just playing Snooker at the age of 22. It's not a bad life for him.
Stephen, stay with us because I want to come to Manya Kutza now, editor of Eye on Digital China. Manya, thank you very much for being with us. And just to add to that story of snooker in China, can you tell us a little bit about the growth of the sport there?
Yeah, well, I think I personally, I studied in China and I lived there and I remember that was around 2008, 2010. And snooker was super big at the time. That was actually the moment when you saw snooker halls mushrooming across Chinese cities everywhere. Of course, the barrier to enter is very low. You know, it's perfect for the urban environment.
But what really started it happened a few years before that. That was in 2005. And that was with the big win of Ding Junhui, who is really seen as the father of snooker in China. And I think what you see with him is that it's kind of the hero effect. It's a little bit with what Yao Ming did with basketball in China. He's really become the face for that.
And what followed later was the ranking events and the snooker academy and the competitions. But I think you should really see him as the foundational figure of Chinese snooker.
And he has funded a lot of the development from his own personal money, hasn't he?
He has, he has. His story is also quite inspiring because, I mean, he went really big, obviously, but he never won the title that Wu has now. And at the meantime, he's been quite public about his mental health struggles, which is quite inspiring, while running this academy funded substantially from his own earnings. Yeah, I think it's quite admirable what he's done.
And is there huge support in China for this desire amongst the proponents and supporters of development of snooker that it become one of the major snooker countries or powers, if you like, in the world?
Oh, yes, definitely. And one of the comments that was made, I'm not sure if it was yesterday or the day before, after Wu's win, came from Ding Junhui on his Weibo account. So Weibo is the biggest social media platform in China. And he said that what the country's been seeing from Zhao Xintong now to Wu Yizhe, that this is no longer just a single breakthrough.
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Chapter 5: What is the current state of snooker in China?
So that's a lot. And I think an important point here is that what you see with all of these successful snooker players in China is that they all started at a very early age because you see so many snooker halls. And like you just said, even sometimes in the open air, just in the middle of the street, you see a snooker table. So Children will come in touch with this sport at an early age.
And you saw that with Wu himself, because he was a kid when he went to a snooker hall with his dad and immediately fell in love with the game. And also, let's not forget that in China especially, this is very much a family effort. So afterwards, in Wu's case, his mom actually bought a snooker table. It didn't properly fit into the living room.
So they had the entire structure of the house altered and knocked through an entire bedroom wall to make space for the table. And I think that detail tells you something about how seriously Wu and his family took it from early on.
It's extraordinary. I see the head of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, Stephen Jason Ferguson, calling for a national academy here in the UK to sort of counteract what's coming at them from China. Do you think that will be supported in the industry or in the sport?
I think the sport, certainly, yeah, I mean, it's whether you can get the real estate to do that and kind of pay the rent and all the overheads that come with that is another thing, you know, like, you know, unfortunately, the game has been in decline here for a couple of decades, you know, that's why I say it's so important that it's growing in China because, like, you know, these halls are, like, you know, they're kind of empty a lot of the time and, like, the land is just being used for, you know, bigger developments like housing and stuff as well.
So, look, if the Jason Ferguson proposal gets taken up, you know, that would be absolutely great, but, you know, it's kind of hard to see it happening the way the sport's going now, you know, it's, It's not as it's not kind of like it used to be. I think I think like it's very much the time here in China seems to be the place it's going to be.
Stephen, thank you very much.
Stephen McDermott there from the journal and Manja Kutsa, who is editor of Eye on Digital China.
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