Zhao Xintong set for hero's return to China having found redemption in landmark World Snooker Championship title win at Crucible - 'I learned from it'

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Zhao Xintong's success in becoming China's first world champion has been hailed as a landmark moment for snooker. Yet his rousing run to the sport's greatest prize is no guarantee of future glory in a landscape where multiple world champions are becoming much thinner on the ground. Indeed, the ninth and last person to become a multiple Crucible winner was four-time champion Mark Selby in 2016.

'Seen something very special' - Zhao clinches title with thrilling win over Williams

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It is perhaps a blessing in disguise for the wonderful Zhao Xintong that the World Championship - apparently touted for a move away from the Crucible on an annual basis - has not departed England’s green and pleasant tables for China, a country that has taken to snooker like shipbuilding.

That would have halted the second coming of a prodigious potter fighting out of the city of Shenzhen dubbed 'The Cyclone', who has been compared in style to Roger Federer, a young Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White and perhaps most startlingly a ghost, a bit like Casper the Friendly One.

If the 2025 tournament had been played in his homeland, the 28-year-old could not have become his country and continent's landmark first world champion - and what an utter waste of a massively stylish snooker talent that would have been.

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Watch: Zhao mobbed by fans in China as new world champion makes hero's return home

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The free-scoring Zhao completed a one-sided 18-12 victory over a clearly jaded Mark Williams on Monday night while still serving a ban from competitive play in China.

He naively became embroiled in a match-fixing probe that saw fellow players Liang Wenbo and Li Hang thrown out of the game for good and former Masters champion Yan Bingtao suspended for five years.

While China rightly celebrated a momentous evening of national pride with the PR dream which is Zhao draped in his country's flag in Sheffield, where he has been based since 2016, it could not have been achieved back home, with the Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association extending the sanctions doled out by the WPBSA (World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association) in June 2023.

'Has there ever been a more fearless potter?' - Zhao sinks pair of amazing reds against Williams

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"I think it was unfortunate for some of the boys," snooker GOAT Ronnie O’Sullivan told reporters, before he was filleted 17-7 by Zhao's exuberant exhibition play akin to vintage Ronnie in the semi-finals.

"So some of them, you just think, it was really harsh for them."

'Did something wrong'

For his part, Zhao returned as an amateur last September after accepting charges of being a party to another player fixing two matches and betting on them.

He was initially given a suspension of two years and six months which was reduced to one year and eight months, but was never involved in the serious end of the charges.

"I did something wrong, and I learned from it, but I have never lost faith in myself," Zhao told China's state news agency Xinhua before he flies home on Wednesday to a hero's reception with the old trophy in his carry-on luggage.

"I kept practising as usual and I followed the pro tour attentively.

"I have never thought about quitting snooker, but coming back stronger."

His playing ban in China ends on July 1 which in theory will enable him to perform as world champion in his homeland for the first time before his home crowd at the invitational Shanghai Masters later this summer.

He has surely earned the chance to atone for past errors after his road to redemption concluded with Zhao joining Alex Higgins (1972), Terry Griffiths (1979) and Shaun Murphy (2005) as the only qualifiers to carry off the sport’s biggest prize.

The vast array of skills has never been in doubt since his totemic 10-5 victory over Luca Brecel in the 2021 UK Championship final in York and his 9-0 whitewash of Yan in the German Masters final in Berlin hinted at a golden future.

The longer Zhao remained active in the 49th staging of the sport’s biggest event, the more obvious his standard of play resembled a world champion in waiting.

Jak Jones lost last year's final 18-14 to Kyren Wilson, but was quick to predict Zhao's coronation after being drubbed 10-4 by the former world No. 6 in the first round.

"I don't see anyone who is playing better than him," said Jones.

"If he wins it, I wouldn't be surprised at all and that would be good for the game.

"There are players who have won a lot more, but I don't see anyone in the tournament who is actually better than him."

Watch: Top 10 shots of 2025 World Snooker Championship

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'A long time'

The public face of the sport in its biggest market could be a key staging post in the ongoing development of snooker in Asia with an estimated 150 million viewers in China watching the final unfold.

Now they have a world champion in Zhao, a free-flowing, attacking potter full of Eastern promise, to symbolise the success story of snooker beyond its natural confines in the UK.

Oddly enough, his final three matches at the Crucible with Chris Wakelin (13-5), Ronnie O’Sullivan and Williams were his easiest matches, with all three appearing to run out of steam in the sport’s ultimate stress test.

Zhao was in greater danger in the qualifiers at the nearby English Institute of Sport, with Long Zehuang and Elliot Slessor both narrowly losing 10-8 before he flowered and flowed on the grandest stage, adding six centuries to the 12 he made in qualifying.

"I haven't played in top-class tournaments for quite a long time," said Zhao, who produced two 147 breaks in winning four events on the amateur Q Tour to secure his return to the main circuit.

"I was happy that I could reach the final stages and show up at the Crucible."

For so long, it looked like Ding Junhui would become China’s first world champion after claiming his first ranking title at the age of 18 with a 9-5 win over Stephen Hendry at the China Open in 2005.

But Zhao has timed his run to perfection and was probably also fortunate with the draw, which tends to be the way of it over 17 frazzled days of competition inside the Crucible.

'It is very, very big pressure' - Zhao thrilled to be crowned world champion

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For O’Sullivan, clearly struggling with technique and freedom of expression, changing his cue tip and ferrule after the first session ended at 4-4 was tantamount to an early concession as he departed the event with a session to spare after losing all eight frames to trail 12-4.

That enabled Zhao to have Saturday off while Williams was forced to fend off world No.1 Judd Trump (17-14) in the match of the tournament after a gruelling battle with John Higgins (13-12) that came down to the final black.

If the Williams of Friday and Saturday had faced Zhao over Sunday and Monday, it would perhaps have been a different story in his quest to become the sport’s oldest world champion at the age of 50.

But this is the unique and somewhat unfair demands of snooker, sport and the run of the ball which governs it, on and off the table.

'Highly unlikely'

What next for Zhao beyond his return to China to visit his family and bask in the afterglow of achieving immortality?

Amid an outpouring of salutations about his undoubted brilliance, there is no guarantee that this is not as good as it will get for him, despite predictions that he will become a multiple winner of the game’s main event.

Jimmy White will happily explain how difficult it can be to get lucky once at the Crucible having lost six times in the final in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways between 1984 and 1994.

Mark Selby became the ninth and latest multiple world champion when he defeated Ding 18-14 in the 2016 final, but that will be a decade ago next year.

Williams feels it would be a huge achievement to become the 10th member of that exclusive club, never mind challenge the record haul shared by O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry.

"No. I don’t think anyone will ever challenge them records because the standard is too good. To get that many Worlds and Masters and UKs, it’s too tough," Williams told reporters.

"Who knows? But it will be highly unlikely."

Multiple Crucible winners

7 - Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry
6 - Steve Davis, Ray Reardon
4 - Mark Selby, John Higgins
3 - Mark Williams, John Spencer
2 - Alex Higgins

For the third straight year, we also have a maiden winner of the world title following Luca Brecel and Kyren Wilson, but who is to say they will win it again?

Or if one of the 10 Chinese players, including ranking event winners Zhang Anda, Xiao Guodong and Lei Peifan, who qualified for the last 32, will win it?

The cut-throat nature of the modern game comes with no guarantees.

The undisputed world No. 1 Judd Trump is the greatest player of his generation with 30 ranking victories in his cue case, but remains without a second world title since 2019.

'Moment of glory'

Ding remains without the world title with his vast talent, despite making his Crucible debut in 2007, but has enough time to emulate Zhao if he wants it badly enough. And also be fortunate enough to avoid figures like a rampant Brecel in peak form.

"Congratulations to Zhao Xintong for winning the World Championship," said Ding on Weibo, the social media platform in China.

"I said before: 'I am very happy to see that the threshold I broke in the past has now become everyone’s runway!'

"And today, someone finally reached the finish line on this runway!

"This moment of glory is the best reward for the Chinese fans who have been supporting Chinese snooker and waiting for this day!

"The darkness we once walked through, it was all so that people could see the light.

"Today Zhao Xintong did it! What he won is the shared dream of generations of Chinese snooker players.

"I'm happy for you and proud of the rise of Chinese strength!"

Home hero Ding beats Wakelin to end five-year wait for ranking title

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In the same year he defeated Hendry 20 years ago, Ding also won the first of three UK Championships with a 10-6 win over Steve Davis, then 48, at the Barbican in York, a feat which famously earned him 276 pies from tournament sponsors.

But the meat in the pie was delivered by Zhao two decades on.

Despite China’s devotion to the old green baize and the arrival of Zhao as a youthful poster boy, snooker remains no country for young men.

Trump and Wilson, the top two in the world rankings, are both in their 30s.

'Class of '92' icons Williams, Higgins and O'Sullivan will all remarkably start next season inside the world’s top five in their 50th year, with Williams and Higgins both enjoying recent tournament victories.

Mark Selby, Neil Robertson, Barry Hawkins and Shaun Murphy and Ali Carter are in their 40s.

Only Zhao, who will start next season as world No. 11 after collecting £500,000 from the Crucible, and world No. 14 Si Jiahui are in their 20s inside the elite top 16.

'Just too good' - Zhao counters Williams safety with brilliant pot

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But Zhao is 28, which, believe it or not, is around the same age as Steve Davis when he contested the famous 1985 'black ball' final against Dennis Taylor 40 years ago.

Davis never won another world title beyond his sixth at the age of 31, while Hendry was finished when he claimed his seventh at the age of 30 in 1999.

Change might be coming in snooker, but it is hardly imminent.

While a Chinese world champion has been a long time in the making, it is unlikely to suddenly usher in a new world order.

Rust tends to move quicker than change among the leading men, 11 of the top 16 from 2015 remain there a decade on, but such raw data ignores the facts of the here and now.

For now, Zhao surely deserves to revel in his second coming, his redemption and return to glory, as much as viewers enjoy watching such an electrifying performer simplify such an exacting art form.