| Running: The Autobiography |
| 1 | PROLOGUE I wasn't sure what to call this book. It was a choice between My Year Out', The Comeback Kid' and Running'. The first two are pretty self-explanatory – I took a year out for reasons I've not gone into until now after I won the World Championship in May 2012 and returned in May 2013 to win it again. It was the first time I've won successive Worlds in my career, and I was the first player to do so since Stephen Hendry, whom I regard as the greatest ever, did so in 1997. |
| 2 | Happy days. But in the end I opted for Running because this book is about what has sustained me through the second half of my career. In the first half, it was more drink, drugs and Prozac that kept me on the straight and narrow – crazy though that sounds. This time round, with the not so odd exception, it's been the running that's kept my head straight. Or at least as straight as a head like mine will ever be. |
| 3 | It can't have done me too much harm, if I'm being objective about it. When I wrote my first book 12 years ago I was 25 and I'd just won my first World Championship. Nobody expected me to take that long to win it – with the possible exception of me. Until then I'd become known as the greatest snooker player never to have won the World Championship. And, believe me, that was a big old albatross to hang round my neck. |
| 4 | I was relieved when I finally won it, but there was always the worry that, despite the other big tournaments I'd won, when it came to the Worlds I'd be a one-hit wonder. Now I've won five, and only Steve Davis and Ray Reardon with six and Hendry with seven have won more. Despite all my talk of retiring (and whatever people think, it's not just talk – if I tell people I'm getting out, I believe it when I say it) I still reckon I could overtake their records. |
| 5 | This year at Sheffield I overtook Hendry for the number of centuries made at the Crucible in the final against Barry Hawkins (131), and that was a great feeling. I also scored six centuries in that final, another record. So slowly but surely I am writing my way into snooker's history books. Without running, I reckon I would have given up on the game a long time ago. Running is my religion, my belief system, my way of keeping calm. |
| 6 | Running is painful and horribly physical, but it's also probably the nearest I get to a spiritual high. I want to share my running buzz with everyone – those of you who are already on the buzz will hopefully recognise what I'm writing about; there might even be the odd bit of decent advice here. And it might encourage others to get out in the fresh air, put your foot down and get a serotonin boost. |
| 7 | It made sense to me to write a book about running – not only is it my hobbyobsession, but it's been a recurrent theme in my life. As the sports psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters will tell you, I've spent loads of my life running away from shit, and running to shit – be it drink, drugs, bad people, good people, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, running clubs, family, food, TV cameras, the snooker authorities, my own demons, you name it. |
| 8 | But, of course, this book is also about snooker – my game. The sport that I sometimes detest so much I can't bear to look at a cue; the sport that has been the love of my life. More than anything, the book documents the year between May 2012 and 2013 – even by my standards the craziest 12 months of my life. In 2012, I won the World Championship for the fourth time. It was the greatest feeling ever at the end – my son, little Ronnie, came to join me on the stage at the Crucible and I threw him in the air, the roars were going up and it was just pure bliss. |
| 9 | Straight after I announced I was quitting the game, and I did – for 11 months. Then I agreed to come back for the World Championship to defend my crown. I don't really know what I thought I was going to achieve – after all, nobody had successfully defended the title since Hendry in the 1990s. I'd played one competitive match the whole season, my ranking had slipped down to 29th in the world, and even though they still made me one of the favourites I thought that was just crazy. |
| 10 | Until I went into practice six weeks before the tournament started, I'd barely hit a ball all year. Throughout Sheffield 2013 people asked me why I'd quit, why I was back, and though dribs and drabs emerged I knew I couldn't tell the story properly in a few sound bites. Some of them sounded daft or unconvincing in an Ah, that's just Ronnie' way – when I said I'd come back to pay the kids' school bills everybody laughed and said, how could you not have money for that? |
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