A childhood accident contributed to the birth of the magical ability. The Welsh player is also remembered for his work as Ronnie O’Sullivan’s background force.
A Welsh snooker legend Ray Readon has died at the age of 91, several British media reports. Reardon, who died on Friday, was suffering from cancer.
Born in August 1932, Reardon is one of the most successful snooker players of all time. He won six world championships in the 1970s.
In the open era of snooker, which began in 1969, only two players have won more World Cup titles than Reardon. English Ronnie O’Sullivan and Scotch Stephen Hendry have managed to lift the sport’s most coveted vertical seven times.
Reardon was particularly known for his iron nerves, which he attributed in large part to an accident in his youth. Reardon won the Welsh Amateur Championship from 1950 to 1955, but retired from competitive snooker in 1957 after losing in the first round of the English Amateur Championship.
Reardon ended up working in his father’s footsteps in a coal mine in Stoke-on-Trent, England. There, his life was to end later that year, when a four-meter steel beam fell into the mine shaft where Reardon was working. Reardon, 24, managed to dodge the beam, which caused the shaft to partially collapse.
Reardon was trapped for three hours until rescuers found him. Reardon said in his biography that the ordeal taught him to control his heart rate and blood pressure — a magical ability in a nerve-wracking sport like snooker.
A winning machine
After the accident, Reardon left mining and trained as a police officer. He returned to snooker in 1964 and won the English Amateur Championship.
Snooker finally broke through in Britain in the 1970s, when the BBC started color television broadcasts. The television program Pot Black, which started in 1969, in which the top snooker players played one-round matches, had a particular impact on popularity.
Reardon won the first Pot Black in history. He had the biggest hitting streak of the eight-player tournament, 99 points.
Reardon won the world championship in 1970, 1973–1976 and 1978. His only final loss came in 1982, when the Northern Irishman Alex Higgins downed Reardon 18–15 at the Crucible Theater.
The World Cup final has been played to 18 set wins since 1980. During Reardon’s reign, the finals were significantly longer.
When Reardon won his second World Championship in 1973, he needed 38 wins to win the championship. In the final played in Manchester, Reardon knocked down the Australian Eddie Charlton 38–32, although he lost the opening period of the match 0–7.
O’Sullivan’s mentor
Reardon managed to win the last of his six championships in snooker’s holiest venue, the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, where the World Cup tournament has been played continuously since 1977.
The following year, Reardon celebrated the title by beating the South African in the final Perrie Mansin batch 25–18. At the time of victory, Reardon was 45 years 203 days old.
Reardon remained the oldest world champion until 2022, when Ronnie O’Sullivan achieved his seventh title at 46 years and 148 days.
Reardon has a big handprint in O’Sullivan’s championships. He taught O’Sullivan to appreciate and enjoy the tactical side of snooker.
The collaboration began before the 2004 World Cup when O’Sullivan’s father, who was in prison, called Reardon and asked him to help his son. O’Sullivan immediately won the second World Championship title of his career, during the celebrations of which he remembered Reardon by holding the false teeth of the vampire character Dracula.
Reardon was nicknamed Dracula.