CLEAN BREAK
Ronnie O’Sullivan’s yo-yo health battles – from ballooning to 16st on Smirnoff to ‘wrecking game’ by dieting TOO much
'I was smoking too much weed, I was bulk-buying too much Smirnoff', the star admitted
RONNIE O’Sullivan chalked up another victory last night, beating Judd Trump in the World Grand Prix final.
But the 48-year-old comeback king, who also triumphed at the Masters the previous weekend, admitted he had been feeling “rough” before the match - because he’d let his healthy diet slide.
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“At the start of the week, I was feeling a bit rough,” he said.
“I bought myself an Air Fryer and a smoothie maker. I started eating a bit better and I started feeling like myself.
“I don’t like eating junk food. It puts me in a bit of a funny place. I started to feel better as the week went on.”
Ronnie - AKA the Rocket - has long linked his with the ups and down in his diet and exercise regime.
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Now back to his best, he has suffered a lifetime of yo-yoing weight, addiction and mental struggles and an often unhealthy relationship with food and fitness.
From ballooning to 16st on vodka and takeaways as a troubled teen to failing form due to too MUCH exercise, we chart Ronnie’s rocky health battles that began in his childhood.
Forced to run
Ronnie’s childhood in Essex was unconventional - with parents who ran a chain of sex shops and a passion for the game that led him to hanging out in smoky snooker halls as a young boy.
But dad Ronnie Snr was passionate about exercise and forced his young son to run every day.
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“He used to force me to go out,” he told Runnersworld.
“He said, ‘You can leave school when you’re 15, but you have to keep fit. Healthy body, healthy mind.’
“I never used to enjoy it, but I noticed it made me play better snooker. And I wanted to be as good as I could at snooker, so I kept it up.
But when his dad was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder, when Ronnie was 16, he stopped running and began to pile on the weight, swelling to 15 stone.
Just a year later, Ronnie became the youngest ever UK Champion, seven days before his 18th birthday and at 19, in 1994, he became the youngest Masters champion.
But he has already begun to binge on drink and drugs and, when his mum was sent to prison for tax evasion, in 1996, he struggled to cope with looking after his eight–year-old sister alone.
He told The Times: "I went wild for six years. Booze and spliffs, I love a joint. The only problem with a joint is that one follows another, and another.
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“I would have any old drink, it didn’t matter. Then at 7am the sun would come up and I’d think, ‘Oh Jesus, I’ve done it again’.”
In his autobiography, Ronnie, he revealed he ballooned to 16 stone after bingeing on vodka and fast food.
He added: “I was smoking too much weed, I was bulk-buying too much Smirnoff. I’d always been capable of putting away a fair amount of food but now I found new gear.
“Calling up minicabs and getting them to deliver enough McDonald’s to feed most of D wing at the Scrubs, going down the list on the menu for the local Chinese and ordering so much you would struggle to actually take it away.
I was smoking too much weed, I was bulk-buying too much Smirnoff. I’d always been capable of putting away a fair amount of food but now I found new gear
Ronnie O'Sullivan
“16 stone, when my natural weight as a late teenager should have been 11, 12 max. A right old gut on me, my snooker waistcoats straining at the seams, being let out at the back and then abandoned altogether for a larger man’s cut.
“Puffing like a maniac in the evening, lining up the food beforehand, waking with the munchies and smashing a load more down.”
While he was still on top form at the table, the addiction led to a suspended two year ban and £20,000 fine after he attacked an official, in 1996, and he was stripped of his title after winning the Irish Master, two years later, when he tested positive for cocaine.
Mental struggles
His addictions came hand in hand with mental health issues including depression and anxiety, which have plagued him throughout his stellar career.
In the recent Amazon documentary, The Edge of Everything, Ronnie says his Dad going to prison had a profound effect.
"I didn't want to blame everything on that situation with my dad, but I was thinking, 'I'd rather not have the snooker', just a normal family," he says. "Because… It was a dream, but looking back, it was a nightmare.
"I wasn't good at having all this stuff locked inside me. People could see that I was imploding.
"If I had really let it all out they'd have locked me up. They'd have said he's a danger to himself. Just self-doubt and self-sabotage and hatred towards myself."
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In 2000, he finally sought help, signing up to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and following their 12 Step Programme.
“I went to AA and NA, I learned about addiction and struggled for about three or four years, because I just couldn’t accept that I was an addict,” he wrote in his May 2023 book, Unbreakable.
“Now I don’t question it, whereas before, I’d go out and try to drink sensibly and fail miserably. So now, I think, don’t even start.
“They say if you stand outside the barber’s long enough, eventually you’ll get a haircut. So I stay away from clubs, from people that drink. They’re not for me, because eventually that will be me.”
Running obsession
Towards the end of the decade, the split from his partner Jo Langley, the mother of his children Lily and Ronnie Jr, contributed to his struggles.
He also has an older daughter, Taylor-Ann Magnus who was born in 1996 from a two-year relationship with Sally Magnus.
In a bid to lose weight and get his health back on track, Ronnie returned to running - which also became his new addiction.
He joined a running club and would also run 10k most mornings, hauling himself out at 6.30 in the morning to pound the forest floors near his Essex home.
By 2008, his weight had dropped to 11.5st. He said running had became "my religion, my belief system" and improved his mental health.
In his second book, Running, he said the exercise regime “has helped me to fight my demons - my addictive personality, depression, my dad's murder conviction, the painful break-up with the mother of my children - and allowed me to win five World Snooker Championships.”
“Running has kept the things that are important to me – my family, relationships and snooker – much more stable,” he told Runnersworld.
“I’ve noticed I don’t get so moody, there isn’t the same self-loathing. Running just makes me feel so much better about myself, which is good for everyone around me too.”
But his addictive personality meant that too became a problem, and in September 2017 he revealed he had “hit a wall’ with his physical and mental wellbeing and that too much exercise and a carb-free diet had wrecked his game.
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“I was playing badly because I was so knackered all the time,” he said.
“I was following a carbohydrate-free diet to try and drop some pounds, without realising that my brain needed good carbohydrates to function during matches.”
Ronnie teamed up with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert and changed his diet, cutting his portion sizes, cutting out some foods and adding others.
“I’ve shed two stone in the past two years, purely through changing my diet, and have never felt so energised,” he said in 2022.
“Nutrition has made a massive difference to me. When I stopped running as competitively, some bad habits crept back in. I used to equate running with staying slim and thought the eating wasn’t important.
“I’ve come to realise it’s actually the other way round: I don’t have to run like I used to as long as I eat right.’
Mental health
Since 2011, Ronnie hasd been working with sports psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters, to combat his depression and anxiety.
“I’ve learned everything from Steve Peters,” he has said. “He has given me the ability to work it out for myself now, to get on with it and not be afraid to confront stuff and know how to get on top of it.”
But mental health issues still flare up. In 2022, after winning a record-equalling seventh World Snooker Championship last year, he wept as he hugged his two youngest kids, Lily and Ronnie Jr, telling them: "I can't f***ing do this anymore, it will kill me."
In November he pulled out of the Champion of Champions tournament in Nov cos he was "mentally feeling a bit drained and stressed".
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In The Edge of Everything, he and Laila Rouss - his partner since 2012 - talked openly about his mental health struggles.
“My addictions are good in many ways because it drives me on - but it needs to be managed,” he says, adding: “I never want to go to those dark places, but sometimes you have to.”
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