World champion Zhao Xintong’s manager will not let spending splurges wreck dream

Zhao Xintong is on course to become the richest snooker player in history – but his no-nonsense manager insisted she would not allow any spending splurges to wreck his dream of winning multiple ‘triple crown’ titles.

The 28-year-old Zhao beat Mark Williams 18-12 to clinch both the illustrious crown and a cheque for £500,000, watched by an estimated 150 million television viewers in his homeland.

Zhao’s prize money potential is set to be dwarfed by lucrative endorsements heading his way, but Victoria Shi, who runs the Sheffield academy where he has trained since first arriving in the UK in 2016, is determined to keep a tight grip on his spending plans.

“Let him enjoy it, but if he enjoys it too much, I will tell him off,” said Shi. “He is the first Asian world champion and that is huge. But it is my job to make sure he stays grounded.”

Zhao’s win was all the more remarkable for the fact that he battled through four qualifying rounds, having only returned to the tour in September following a 20-month ban for his part in a match-fixing scandal involving 10 Chinese players.

Having swept to the UK title in 2021, there had been fears that Zhao’s ban could wreck the career of a player who had been picked out by the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan and Jimmy White as a prospective star of the future.

Shi, whose academy is also home to other top Chinese stars – including others who were handed heftier bans in the match-fixing investigation – revealed how she convinced Zhao to put the controversy behind him and make a fresh start.

“I told him, you didn’t kill anyone, you didn’t lose your arms and legs. You made the biggest mistake of your life, now learn from it and you will become a stronger person,” added Shi. “I think he is stronger because of it.”

Zhao will head home to China to show off the trophy this week and revel in a triumph that has been a long time coming, since China’s original snooker trailblazer Ding Junhui won the first of his three career UK titles in 2005.

However, Ding came up short at the Crucible, and when China’s other major winner, Yan Bingtao, the 2021 Masters champion, was banned until 2027 for his part in the match-fixing affair, there were real fears that China’s love affair with the sport – and its lucrative earning potential – could have peaked.

Jason Ferguson, chairman of the sport’s global governing body, the WPBSA, has long championed the growth of the sport in China and helped established a post-Covid calendar which this season boasted a total of six major or ranking title events in the country, including Hong Kong.

Ferguson said of the match-fixing scandal: “Things like that are going on in all sports and it’s how you manage it. It’s a disaster when it first happens but we’ve soon returned to the China market.

“We’ve worked alongside the players to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again. We’re highly confident the sport has come through this and I can only see it going forward.”

Ferguson is excited by the young prospects at both Shi’s and Ding’s Sheffield academies, who are already showing signs of being able to emulate Zhao, with 14 Chinese players inhabiting the end-of-season world rankings, all but three of whom are under the age of 30.

“I think Xintong has the potential to become the richest snooker player in the history of the sport,” added Ferguson. “That’s quite a bold statement when you think about the titles players like Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan won.

“But the size of the market is huge and when you see the association of the brands who want to partner with snooker, it has endless potential.

“This is one of the biggest occasions snooker has ever seen. We’ve seen the growth in the China market and we’ve seen the size and scale of grass-roots development underneath that.

“To see a world champion returning to China as a national hero is only really going to send the sport to another level.”