Zhao beat Mark Williams on Monday to seal a historic victory for Chinese snooker, but he has only just returned from a ban over match-fixing
Zhao is China’s first ever world snooker champion
After years of waiting and hoping, it has finally happened. Zhao Xintong’s sublime victory over Mark Williams at the Crucible means China has its first world snooker champion.
The 26-year-old did it against strong headwinds too, having come through qualifying to reach the best-of-35 final and winning 111 frames over nearly a month of snooker to claim the title.
But Zhao was only forced into qualifying after losing his place on snooker’s professional tour in 2023 when he was banned for his part in a match-fixing scandal that rocked the sport.
Here is the story behind his return and redemption and of the 10 Chinese players who were suspended, two of them for life.
The Chinese snooker boom
When you look at the numbers, it is surprising that Zhao is China’s first world champion. There are an estimated 300,000 snooker clubs in China, and of the last 32 players at the World Championship this year, a record 10 were Chinese. Six of them made it through to the last 16.
A World Champion is born 🙌
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) May 5, 2025
The moment Zhao Xintong secured his first Crucible crown 👑 pic.twitter.com/fhwSGeMnEz
The game appears to have arrived in the country during the last 1980s, but it was not until it became part of the Asian Games in 1998 that it really started to blossom. Two early Chinese pioneers of the game, Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, both won gold and went onto play at the highest level of the professional game.
Ding, who left school at the age of 11 to practise full-time, became the first Chinese player to reach world No 1 in 2014; by that point, the snooker authorities had already opened an academy in Beijing so that his thousands of fans could start to follow in his footsteps.
But despite being a national hero in his native China, Ding moved to the UK to practise at the English Institute of Sport. During Covid he hatched the idea of opening an academy in South Yorkshire, a kind of finishing school for players like him.
The scandal that rocked the sport
So Sheffield, home of the World Championship, has also become an outpost of Chinese snooker, with players living and training in close quarters in the city.
But during the pandemic, that was where snooker’s dark side took hold. A number of players, unable to return home, became lonely and isolated, as well as under acute financial pressure due to, in the words of the report that banned 10 of them in 2023, “the expenses of travelling to compete in snooker tournaments abroad and ill-judged gambling and betting habits”.
Established players Liang Wenbo and Li Hang capitalised on their vulnerability and were handed lifetime bans for their part in the biggest scandal in the sport’s history.
The independent report that banned them also handed Zhao a 20-month suspension, but it also painted him as a victim of sorts, as well as a perpetrator. He alone among the 10 “did not himself fix any match” and even “attempted to dissuade Yan [Bingtao] from match fixing on both occasions”, but did nevertheless place the bets his close friend asked him to, and felt he had no other option.
That is not to excuse what he did but he certainly was not a ringleader, and Zhao’s total suspension was reduced from two-and-a-half years to one year and six months when a one-third discount was applied for his early admission of guilt.
‘The game has missed him’
As such, his return to the fold has been relatively smooth. Zhao practised every day during his ban and was, before suspension, a top-10 player who won the prestigious UK Championship in 2021. No one doubted his ability, but having lost his professional status, he had to start again, playing qualifying school tournaments to earn a tour card for next season.
It also meant the Chinese player had to start his World Snooker Championship campaign early, coming through his first qualifying match before Rory McIlroy had even won the Masters, and winning a total of 111 frames to take the title; had Williams won it he would have only won 71.
There has been some dismay among players that Zhao will be allowed to retain his ranking points from the Worlds, earning him a top-16 spot on next year’s tour and therefore a seeded place at tournaments.
And they are not the only ones. The Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association handed out their own bans in the wake of the scandal, and applied no discounts, meaning that Zhao is technically still banned from competition in his own country.
But that is unlikely to dilute the reception of his victory at home. While snooker is still popular, snooker authorities are cognisant of the threat posed by “heyball”, a version of eight-ball pool that has exploded in China, with a huge following among younger generations, more than a million tables and £1.3m of prize money at last month’s grand finals. But Ppe-match estimates put the potential viewing figures for the World Snooker Championship final in China at 150 million, and the snooker powers will not ignore an audience of that size.
And nor should they necessarily want to. While Zhao’s victory is an inevitable reminder of a damaging episode in snooker’s history, he is also a supremely talented player. He pots with the abandon and fearlessness of Ronnie O’Sullivan, whom he beat with a session to spare in the semi-finals, and who was first in line to congratulate him afterwards.
“The game’s missed him. His scoring and potting is incredible,” O’Sullivan said.
“[Zhao winning the world title] will just be amazing for snooker, and his life as well.”
He has certainly gone a long way towards putting his ban behind him.
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