Luca Brecel speaks out on ‘strange health phenomenon’ that harmed his snooker

Luca Brecel is feeling good at the table again after a ‘strange phenomenon’ hampered him for much of last season and is still unexplained.

The 2023 world champion has struggled for results since conquering the Crucible, initially as he found life as a world champion too distracting, but since it has been health problems hampering him.

For much of last season the Belgian Bullet was feeling heavily fatigued and saw doctors on a regular basis, but none came up with a reason for it or a cure.

The 31-year-old has started feeling better, with the fatigue easing, but has largely just been forced to accept that nothing could be done about it.

‘It looks all good. I guess it’s all good. I mean, if the doctor says so, maybe you have to trust them,’ Brecel told Metro. ‘I’m able to play, I’m able to enjoy it, so that’s the most important thing.

‘I never really found out what it was. I’ve always felt great in my life, then all of a sudden something changed without something happening. So it was a strange phenomenon.

‘It was fatigue but not in a way like you go to sleep and then you feel better.
Sleeping didn’t help, so it was a frustrating thing.

‘I don’t have a stressful life, sometimes they say to people, “oh, maybe it’s stress or burnout,” but my whole life is just doing things I like, so it’s not that stressful. So, yeah, tough, but I feel much better now, so that’s great.’

Brecel withdrew from a number of events while he was dealing with the mystery problem and is still trying to get his game back to the level that saw him win the World Championship and there other ranking titles.

There is no shortage of desire to do so, as he showed by competing at the Championship League on Wednesday, topping his group with three wins from three matches.

Although that came after disappointment in early season qualifiers which saw him lose to Steven Hallworth in the Wuhan Open and suffer a whitewash defeat to Stuart Bingham in the China Open.

‘I’m really motivated,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try to do the best I can, try to win tournaments and be in the top 16 again.

‘I’m very focused and very confident in practise as well, but obviously not yet the results going my way, but that’s the next step because you need those wins to get confident on the match table as well.

‘The hunger is there, the talent is there, the experience is there. I’ve got all the tools in the box, but it’s just about time I guess.

‘We see it with Jack Lisowski, he’s so good, and it still took him such a long time to win. Obviously I’ve won early in my career already, but it’s not that easy all the time, but I think if you keep going, then eventually it’s going to pay off

‘I’m still very young, so that means if I put in all the right things now, then I’ve still got a long career, and that’s what I want.’

Brecel’s 2023 triumph was one of the most stunning World Championship wins ever, beating the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Williams, producing the biggest comeback in Crucible history against Si Jiahui in the semis and then downing Mark Selby in the final.

However, despite his confident style of play and demeanour at the table, Brecel did not enjoy the attention that came with scaling snooker’s highest peak.

‘After the Worlds, maybe too much distraction, too much attention,’ he said.
‘Not my lifestyle, just getting recognised on the street everywhere you go. Lots of things to deal with off the table, and that wasn’t always easy for me.

‘It was never pressure, to be honest. If it was, I would admit it,
but it’s just being distracted, not focused because everything is just different than the whole career before.’

Brecel – who is expecting his first child in December – is keen to point out it wasn’t a wild lifestyle that cost him his focus, after he developed something of a rock n roll reputation during his World Championship win, which he admits he brought on himself.

‘Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have said in the interview that I was drunk after a game, because that was the only time I was drunk, maybe in the last five years!’ Brecel said.

‘Obviously when you say that on the BBC, maybe it’s normal that people try to make an image out of it, but it’s not like that. If it was like that, that would be fine as well, you know? But it’s not like that, and I think it’s good for people to know.’

A very relaxed and seemingly nonchalant character, but Brecel does not hide how much that World Championship win meant to him and how badly he wants another one.

‘I still think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s always going to be special and my dream now is to do it again. It will never be in the same way, but to win it again is my main goal now.

‘To win it twice, especially as a guy from Belgium, very young. To win it twice at age, I don’t know, 35, maybe, who knows, that would be quite special.’

The Bullet only turned 31 in March, which is very young in this era of snooker, so he knows time is firmly on his side as he looks to repeat his crowning moment.

‘Sometimes when I look at other players, like Kyren [Wilson] or Judd [Trump] or Jack [Lisowski], I always think they’re my age, but actually they’re a bit older than me, like four or five years older than me.

‘I’m younger than them, never mind [Neil] Robertson or [Ronnie] O’Sullivan and [John] Higgins. But you have to take your chances at the right time.’

One thing that surprised snooker players and fans after Brecel’s world title win was that no professional tournament emerged in Belgium as the sport seemed to fail to capitalise on his success.

The Belgian Bullet, though, was not bothered.

‘I don’t know, I think everyone knows I don’t really care,’ he said. ‘Other players have come up to me, like, “oh, how is it possible that there wasn’t a ranking tournament in Belgium?” I couldn’t care less, to be honest.

‘I just play the tournaments that are on the calendar, and I enjoy them, so it doesn’t matter where it is. Well, maybe try one in the US, though, because I love it.’

Brecel spent time as world champion playing exhibitions in America, but while he loved doing it, he’s not so sure the fanbase is there yet.

‘Not really,’ he said on appetite for snooker stateside. ‘I played an exhibition there and there was about 25 people. I played one of them and he didn’t even know the rules, so that tells a story.’

Brecel will be back in action at the Championship League on Friday in his second stage group with Hossein Vafaei, Pang Junxu and Ian Burns.

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