IT’S NO SECRET that elite athletes invariably tend to be quite boring people.
The secret to success, more often than not, is long hours spent practising, coupled with levels of discipline that would make a monk baulk.
Usually, away from the playing field or in this case, the snooker table, those athletes we look up to and often adore, don’t get to have much fun (if any).
Yet British snooker star Jimmy White is the exception that proves the rule, seemingly. The fans’ favourite hit the headlines earlier this year by claiming drugs and alcohol cost him as many as 10 world titles.
White, a legend of the game, is almost certainly the most gifted player never to have won a World Championship title, despite appearing in the final at the Crucible on six occasions. He is essentially snooker’s answer to George Best — for all the wonderful memories and shots he produced over the years, there is an abiding feeling of unfulfilled potential when assessing the Londoner’s bittersweet career.
Up until the revelations broke back in November, it had been assumed that White was just desperately unlucky, but he now claims that his shoddy preparation for big events, often encompassing all-night drink binges, was largely to blame for his failures.
The 52-year-old recounts his wild days of excess in his recently released autobiography, Second Wind, in which he estimates that drink and drugs cost him roughly £10,000 a month and contributed to the end of his marriage. Having been an addict for a considerable portion of the 1980s and 90s — a period that improbably coincided with his best snooker — White finally made a conscious decision to kick the habit in 1994. And although one chapter in his new book is titled ‘no regrets,’ having wasted an estimated £200,000 on cocaine and £2million on gambling, I suspect he actually has a few.
(At 52, Jimmy White still believes he can one day win the World Championship)
He also admits that reliving these memories, while working on the book in Tenerife with ghostwriter Chris Brereton, was “quite painful”.
“My preparation [for snooker matches] was pretty bad,” he tells TheScore.ie. “For certain tournaments, I didn’t get myself ready. I was out binging on cocaine — it cost me tournament after tournament. I’m not taking away anything from anyone who beat me — good luck to them. But I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.
“Snooker saved me in a way though, because as I had that passion for the game, I never wanted to be drug tested and caught having cocaine on me, so I’d stop for two weeks before tournaments, but that’s no preparation. It’s not enough time, as it takes you three or four days to even become normal.
“But in a way, it was good to get [the revelations] out there. It was therapeutic, and also now, my snooker’s in good shape.”
White’s addiction and desire to indulge in excess was so intense that he admits he’s lucky to be alive and feels he might not have been so fortunate had even greater success come his way.
“I might have died if I won the World Championships in 82 because of the road I was going down. There were only four channels in those days, and you think you’re famous [when you're on TV].
“You’re a kid coming from a working-class family, you’ve suddenly got loads of money, pretty girls talking to you, the drink flowing everywhere — I didn’t know what I was doing and before I knew it, I was living this rock star life. You actually think you’re someone you’re not — you become very devious, you lie to yourself, you lie to everyone around you, and I kept it going for all those years.
“If we had a drug dealer coming here now, I’d get the nod from him at reception and I’d meet him at the toilet and I’d come back and you wouldn’t even know that I’d been to see him.
“Drink was my biggest problem and if I took cocaine, I was able to drink more. And they both ruin your life, they make you someone you’re not.”
(Jimmy White plays an exhibition match at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin in 2007 against staff and some prisoners in aid of the Special Olympics Charity Ireland)
Second Wind inevitably contains plenty of shocking anecdotes of White’s drink and drug-fuelled days. After his brother dies of cancer, for instance, a heavily intoxicated White decides to steal the body from the funeral home before none-too-subtly returning him back in a taxi shortly thereafter, having had ‘one last drink’ with him.
“We were sitting in the pub and the funeral parlour was across the road and I’d been to see him only three hours before,” he recalls. “I just wanted to say goodbye to him again. There was a padlock on this big gate, and I kicked it, thinking I’m going to walk away from it, and it opened. It just felt like a sign and it just felt right.
“I took him to my [other] brother’s house and I took him to another place for a drink, and people will say that’s evil, but it felt right at the time. I apologised to his family for it, but at the time, it didn’t feel wrong and I don’t regret it at all.”
Amazingly, very few people — including White’s family — knew about his drug use until the star went public last month. And the player admits to being relieved at the sympathetic reaction he has received as a result of this sudden expression of brutal honesty.
“I wanted to apologise to my family and friends, and all my fans out there. I’ve had enormous support from the public and I’ve had people who I haven’t spoken to in 25 years, ringing me up and asking me if was okay. I was so pleased and proud of that.
“All I can say is I can’t turn back time, but I can still go and win tournaments for them and win tournaments for myself.”
Speaking of which, White’s passion for snooker remains undimmed. Despite being widely perceived as past his best, the star insists he can still win the World Championship and claims he would give up snooker if he didn’t believe this to be the case.
And for all he has achieved in the game, one of White’s defining moments is likely to be a famous shot that went awry during the 1994 World Championship final against his perpetual nemesis Stephen Hendry. With the score level at 17-17 going into the final frame, White established a 37-24 lead, before a missed black ultimately proved pivotal in this agonising defeat.
“It gets brought up a lot,” he sighs. “Me and Ken [Doherty] were talking about it earlier on, and he missed a similar shot in the Masters.
“I twitched on it. It’a like if you play golf sometimes, you want to get it in the hole but you don’t want it to go too far past and you underhit it sometimes and it doesn’t reach the hole. It’s the same in snooker — I threw my cue at it.
“You can say bottled, gone mentally or whatever, but for me, I just rushed it. If that was the end for me, then I wouldn’t have won any more tournaments, but I’ve won tournaments since, so I got through it.”
Not only was it his sixth loss in the World Championship final, it was also his fourth defeat at that stage against Stephen Hendry. Yet the Scot, surprisingly, was not White’s least favourite opponent.
“Steve Davis was the hardest player to play against. Stephen Hendry was in his own bubble, but Davis had the best all-round safety game. However, [Ronnie] O’Sullivan is the one I want to play. He’s the one that excites me.”
White admits to having “no idea” what he’d have done if a career in snooker had not worked out. Taking up the game around the age of 12, he quickly showed a natural flair for it and soon became widely regarded as a prodigy.
(White pictured at the World Championships in 1984 with Steve Davis, who he describes as his most difficult opponent)
Before long, he was beating anyone who would play him for money, and appearing in newspaper articles under descriptions such as ‘boy wonder’. Inevitably, education took a backseat owing to his snooker prowess, while his rough background virtually ensured his options were likely to be limited either way.
“For me, it was all normal,” he says. “As I look back, I think, ‘Jaysus, a child of that age shouldn’t have been in that situation,’ but they had no chance of stopping me — I was completely hooked.
“I was freaking out at night and everything, but it was more of a school of life, playing in snooker halls [from a very young age]. Plus I had a great time, and I’m still doing what I love doing.”
In addition, although he considers winning the UK Championship as his greatest victory, he suggests his reputation as an entertainer is more important than any title ever could be.
“People appreciate what you’ve done when you’re doing an exhibition at tournaments — I see the joy they get when the ball goes in the pot. I have a great rapport with the fans. The support I get is phenomenal… They like the way I play, they like the way I attack the game — that’s the main thing I love about snooker.”
And in Ronnie O’Sullivan, who White considers to be the greatest snooker player of all time, he sees a likeminded soul.
“He attacks the game. He wants to win at all costs… The public love O’Sullivan now because of the way he plays and he’s warming to the public, and I think he’ll interact with them a bit more with age.”
(White pictured with Ronnie O’Sullivan during a press conference last year)
Yet while White may still play the game largely on his impulses, he no longer acts on them so brazenly away from the spotlight.
“I’ve been doing a lot of work with NA [Narcotics Anonymous] and I’ve been getting better and better as the years have gone on. I’ve been clean now for a long time. And if I can help someone never have a line of cocaine or never even consider having hard drugs, I’m pleased to do that. So it was just time to get the truth out there and get it off my shoulders.
“I was a full-blown drug addict and alcoholic, but when you’re doing it, you’re in denial. This is why I do NA and AA, and I help friends and I sponsor a few people that phone me when they’re getting in trouble. If anyone does any cocaine around me, I leave immediately and I just keep away and warn as many people off it as I can.”
But given that he was still hugely successful — by most snooker players’ standards — in the midst of this alcohol and drugs haze, does he ever worry that his revelations could have the opposite effect and convince certain impressionable people to indulge in similar levels of excess?
“Definitely not,” he says. “In the book, I call it the ‘Devil’s Dandruff’ and I try to explain that smoking crack is like sucking the Devil’s dick, so trust me, keep away from it.”
Second Wind: My Autobiography by Jimmy White is published by Trinity Mirror Sport Media. More info here.
