RONNIE O’SULLIVAN reckons the Crucible pressure-cooker makes even the greats of the game feel SICK.
In an excellent Amazon Prime documentary – which was released last November – viewers saw an insight into what O’Sullivan endures when he takes centre stage at the Sheffield venue.
Filmed in 2022, the doc shows the stage fright he experiences behind-the-scenes with O’Sullivan revealing: “I feel ill with pressure, it’s f***king horrible, I hate it.”
The expectations placed on his shoulders – this year he is chasing a record eighth World Championship crown – are enormous and usually suffocating.
The event is stretched over 17 days and to become world champion, you have to win 71 frames across 16 sessions.
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Given that this is 32nd appearance at the tournament, you would have thought he would have learned by now to stop feeling the nerves and butterflies.
Told that these were his first Worlds since everyone saw what it is like backstage, O'Sullivan laughed: “And that was me in a good place. Imagine what I’m like in a bad place!”
“Is that what Sheffield does to snooker players? I think so.
“It manifests itself differently in different people. I always asked Stephen Hendry, how did you feel?
“He replied: ‘I used to be sick in the toilet.’ Okay, I said, so you’re the greatest...
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“I put you in the Tiger Woods and Michael Schumacher bracket of people that are built to win. And your way of dealing with it is you get sick.
“Zinedine Zidane was sick when he took a penalty against England at the Euros. He spewed up, then took the penalty and scored.
“Some people manifest it in different ways. I think Steve Davis had it the same way.
“I asked him about it. He said: ‘Ah, it was as horrible as hell.’
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“You need that sort of fear or whatever it is to get you in fight mode.
“I was okay with showing my vulnerability on film because I thought that everybody that goes the full distance at Sheffield will experience that.
“If they don’t experience it the first time, they probably will the second, third and fourth time.
“But I think anybody that wins it, they’ll look back and think: ‘God, that was tough.’”
O’Sullivan enters the action on Wednesday – day five of the champs – and takes on Mark Williams’s protégé Jackson Page over the best of 19 frames.
Asked how he felt when he watched himself back on TV – last autumn’s doc showed his run to a seventh title two years ago – the Rocket replied: “At first, I didn’t like it.
“I was like: ‘Bloody hell, why am I doing this? Why would you put yourself through it?’
“So it affected me a little bit afterwards. Then it made me question it.
“But then I thought, well I got through it. I accept I have to go through that.
“In Sheffield, I have played great, played poorly, won it playing great, won it playing poorly.
“Every time I experience it, it grabs you at some point.
“I’ll go there and there will always be something – pressure, stress, anxiety.
“It’s just so long, 17 days, you’re playing top-class people.
“At the Crucible, you can go five or six frames but because of the atmosphere, it can draw the opponent back in.
“You’re never really safe with a lead really. You know your opponent will catch fire and come back at you.
“So, it doesn’t matter really, what sort of shape you are in going into Sheffield.
“If you win, you’ll have to go through some sort of grind, some sort of rollercoaster.”
Watch the World Snooker Championship live on Eurosport and discovery+ every day until May 6.
