‘Never count me out’: O’Sullivan ready and relaxed for Crucible record tilt

W e have known for quite some time that Ronnie O’Sullivan is not your typical snooker player. At times he has seemed immune to everything thrown in his path. Yet his admission that he has taken to pilates to help prepare him for the chance to break one of the few snooker records left for him to break emphasised two things.

First that O’Sullivan does not rehearse quite like any other player does. You cannot envisage many of his peers on a pilates mat, after all. And second that at the age of 47, the stresses and strains which come with being the favourite to win at the Crucible for the eighth time – and beating Stephen Hendry’s modern era record of seven which he tied last year – are immaterial in comparison with the one thing even he cannot evade: the trials and tribulations of age.

“It gets harder as you get older,” O’Sullivan said before his first match against the Chinese prodigy Pang Junxu on Saturday morning in Sheffield. “It’s hard to mentally keep going. You get tired and it’s just harder. It’s tougher. I’ll always care but what I do is have a very good perspective on life so it’s not everything.

“I do a lot more pilates and stuff like that nowadays, just staying in a good place and focusing on being calm about everything. There is no point getting wound up about anything at this stage in my life, you know. I take things in my stride.” And it is exactly that attitude which could make O’Sullivan as big a threat as ever at this year’s tournament. History has taught us that a relaxed, composed O’Sullivan is a dangerous O’Sullivan.

He says that on the past two occasions he has won here, in 2020 and 2022, it has taken him a fortnight just to feel normal afterwards. “Back in like 2012, I was fresh as a daisy after