Latest news with #MichalSzubarczyk
The Sun
4 days ago
- Sport
- The Sun
Former world champion Shaun Murphy shows no mercy to snooker wonderkid, 14, on history-making debut
FORMER world snooker champion Shaun Murphy showed no mercy to a teenage wonderkid in qualifying for the Wuhan Open this week. The Magician faced 14-year-old Michal Szubarczyk on Monday for a place in the August competition. 2 2 But he didn't go easy on his opponent, who made history at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester. Murphy won the match 5-0 with breaks of 70, 91 and 102 and limited the teenager to just 60 points in total. In facing the 2005 world snooker champion, Szubarczyk became the youngest professional in the sport's history. He earned his tour card by reaching the final of the European Amateur Snooker Championship in March. Although he lost the final, the Polish star secured the card because the winner, Liam Highfield, had already earned one. Szubarczyk is next due to play against amateur player Umut Dikme in qualifying for the British Open on Thursday. Ahead of his tour debut, the 14-year-old said: "I love playing with the audience and cameras and I hope there will many matches like that. "I don't put much pressure on myself to win, I have a lot of time to achieve my goals. "When I got the tour card there were very mixed emotions. I had been striving for this since I was seven years old. But then suddenly doubts appeared. "Whether I can do it, whether I'm too young? There were questions about finances, and what about school, what about the rest of the family, will I manage? Mark Williams attempts new way of potting yellow as snooker referee struggles to contain his laughter "But I am sure it is the right decision because it has always been my dream." Szubarczyk also revealed that Ronnie O'Sullivan has been his idol from a young age. He added: "I was almost seven when I first watched snooker. Dad was watching Ronnie play, I asked if I could sit in. "Then I asked if we could go to play sometime. We went the next day and…here I am! "Ronnie is still my hero, he has a special place in my head. His offensive, even aggressive style of play was my model when I started playing. Now I'm just improving all the time."
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Skid marks, swear jars and an early night: welcome to sport's nanny state
A 14-year-old has been taking the Indian Premier League by storm. A 17-year-old may win this year's Ballon d'Or. Last month another 17-year-old became the youngest winner of a Formula Two race. In darts the last world champion was 17, a 14-year-old just became the youngest winner of a World Darts Federation event and this week the promoter Barry Hearn described watching a prodigy who 'had a 106 average and checked out 140 and 154'. He was only 10. The 14‑year‑old Polish snooker player Michal Szubarczyk is about to become the sport's youngest ever professional. In this context it is a little hard to complain about the infantilisation of sport. And yet. For all its recent Netflix-promoted virality, motor racing has always seemed an unusually grown-up pastime. For 75 years Formula One has given us strength, skill, drama and occasional scandal, heroes and villains, bravery and tragedy. A global survey in 2021 found the average age of the sport's fanbase was 32, but in 2022 84% of the people who watched the British Grand Prix on Channel 4 (and 68% of those watching on Sky) were aged 35 or over. Which made it only more jarring when its administrators started to obsess over schoolyard distractions such as swearing and underpants. You could argue the sport has always been associated with skid marks but its pivot towards the trouser-based variety in 2022, over concerns that flammable fabrics might be being used by drivers, seemed unnecessary. ('I'm reliably informed our drivers go commando,' said Red Bull's Christian Horner. 'If they want to check my arse, feel free,' said the French driver Pierre Gasly.) Then the issue of bad language blew up, when Max Verstappen was punished for some mild swearing during a press conference at the Singapore Grand Prix last September. The 27-year-old was ordered to complete a 'work of public interest', which turned out to be using some of the time he was anyway planning to spend in Kigali later in the year helping the Rwanda Automobile Club with the launch of an Affordable Cross Car. Obviously this took Verstappen way out of his comfort zone, in that the cars he normally spends his time in are anything but affordable and the entire experience made him not so much cross as furious. 'It's just the world we live in. You can't share your opinion because it's not appreciated apparently,' he said. 'Everyone is super sensitive about everything.' Last November the Grand Prix Drivers' Association wrote an open letter addressing the big issues the sport was grappling with: 'There is a difference between swearing intended to insult others and more casual swearing, such as you might use to describe bad weather,' they pointed out. 'Our members are adults. They do not need to be given instructions about matters as trivial as underpants.' For some reason the Federation International de l'Automobile, the governing body of global motor sport, has recently sought to cast itself as a sporting administrative version of The Blues Brothers' Sister Mary Stigmata, the nun who becomes so incensed by the siblings' fruity language she ends up furiously slapping them about the head with a stick before decrying their 'filthy mouths and bad attitudes' and ordering them to 'get out and don't come back until you've redeemed yourselves'. (They, too, go on to accomplish some extraordinary things with cars, the film famously involving the destruction of 103 of them.) In January the FIA leaned further into the role, introducing new and even harsher rules governing what they call 'misconduct' and define as either swearing or 'assaulting (elbowing, kicking, punching, hitting, etc)'. These amounted to the creation of an extraordinarily lavish swear jar, with fines for F1's foul-mouthed motorists at €40,000 (£33,700) and rising to €120,000, plus suspensions and point deductions. The rules were wildly excessive and equally unpopular, though they did in effect stop anyone in the sport publicly saying what they really thought of them. After several months of grumbling this week there was significant row-back, or as the FIA described it a 'major improvement', with more sober fines and the threat of suspension lifted. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion One curious thing about this collision between speeding cars and individual liberties is that it is the exactly the context in which the term 'nanny state' seems to have been invented. The then Conservative MP Iain Macleod snuck it into an article he wrote in 1965 railing against 'the perishing nonsense of a plan for a 70mph speed limit even on motorways', an inauspicious birth for a phrase that was to take root so efficiently, given it was not only hidden deep within a random issue of the Spectator but also within a diatribe that was itself perishing nonsense. 'Doesn't the minister realise that his new restriction is as unenforceable as it is undesirable?' Macleod wailed; it was swiftly shown to reduce casualties by 20% and remains in force 60 years later. On the very day the FIA announced its latest stance on swearing, the Football Association, Premier League and Football League agreed to bring the closure of the summer transfer windows forward to 7pm, apparently so as not to delay anyone's bedtime. 'The transfer window traditionally closes at 11pm,' reported PA Media, 'but the earlier deadline is intended to allow club and league officials to complete their work at more sociable hours.' This in an industry that is entirely focused on making things happen on evenings and weekends. For a few hours on Wednesday it felt like only a matter of time before the England and Wales Cricket Board published its official position on how much sugar helps the medicine go down. By the time they made a sequel to The Blues Brothers, 18 years after the wildly successful original, the studio funding it had forced on its creatives a more family-friendly position. The new film flopped miserably. 'We wrote a terrific script, then Universal eviscerated it,' complained the director, John Landis. 'They couldn't use profanity, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers' nuts off.'
BBC News
08-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Szubarczyk, 14, beaten in World Championship qualifiers
Fourteen-year-old Michal Szubarczyk was denied a place in snooker history as he was narrowly defeated in the first round of World Championship qualifying at the English Institute of Sport in Polish teenager was looking to break Ronnie O'Sullivan's long-standing record by becoming the youngest player to qualify for the World Championship at the lost 10-8 to Scotland's Dean Young, who will face Stan Moody in the second stormed into a 4-0 lead, before Szubarczyk found his rhythm and won three of the next five frames to trail 6-3 at the won five of the following eight frames but could not overturn the deficit against the 23-year-old. Seven-time winner O'Sullivan is the youngest-ever qualifier at the Crucible, doing so at the age of 16 in rose to prominence last month when he reached the final of the open-age event at the European Championship, where he lost to 34-year-old Liam Pole has been offered a two-year card on the World Snooker Tour (WST).The World Championship will begin on 19 April at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. How qualifying works The qualifying event at the English Institute of Sport features 144 are hoping to secure one of the 16 places on offer at the 32-player tournament, with 16 players already automatically qualified via their are four qualifying rounds and players begin their campaigns at different stages, depending on their world ranking.
BBC News
07-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
The 14-year-old gunning for O'Sullivan's Crucible record
Michal Szubarczyk. Remember the name. The 14-year-old is hoping to make history this week by breaking Ronnie O'Sullivan's long-standing record to become the youngest player to qualify for the World Championships at the Crucible. The Pole has been making waves on the snooker circuit, winning the U16 and U18 European Championship titles in the teenager really caught the eye by reaching the final of the open age event, which saw him beaten by 34-year-old Liam remarkable run was enough for Szubarczyk to be offered a two-year card offer on the World Snooker Tour (WST). His performances earned praise from three-time World Champion Mark Williams, who said the teenager is "not far away", external from the level of Ronnie O'Sullivan at the same age. But now Szubarczyk is aiming to break O'Sullivan's 33-year record by qualifying for the 2025 World Championships. Seven-time winner O'Sullivan is the youngest-ever qualifier at the Crucible, doing so at the age of 16 in 1992. With qualifying held months in advance of the tournament proper, he was then 17 years and five months old when he made his debut at the event, losing 10-7 to Alan McManus. 2023 Champion Luca Brecel holds the record for the youngest player at the Crucible's main event, playing at the age of 17 years and 45 days in 2012. Szubarczyk can comfortably beat both of those records as he heads into qualifying at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield on 8 April, with final round matches being played on 15 April. The Pole faces Scotland's Dean Young in the first round, with the winner of the best-of-19-frames tie going through to face Stan teenager needs to win four consecutive matches to earn a spot at the Crucible, But a victory against Young would see Szubarczyk become the youngest player to ever win a qualifying match at the World Championships, beating the record previously held by Liam Davies, who was 15 years and 277 days old when he beat Aaron Hill in 2022. How qualifying works 144 players enter the qualifying event at the English Institute of Sport for the World Championships. They are hoping to secure one of the 16 places on offer at the 32-player tournament, with 16 players already automatically qualified via their ranking. There are four qualifying rounds and players begin their campaigns at different points defending on their world ranking.
