It all started over twenty years ago, working for one of the most prestigious websites in China Victoria Shi was sent to the United Kingdom to report on Everton’s two new Chinese signings Li Tie and Li Weifeng signed after the 2002 World Cup. Travelling from Goodison Park to Maine Road and St James Park she followed the players around the length and breadth of the country and reported on their time in England, while their time in the UK was short lived Victoria’s certainly hasn’t been.
Also emerging at this time was a new Chinese superstar who was about to take the world of snooker by storm, enter the dragon Ding Junhui who turned professional in 2003. Victoria would report on his matches developing a friendship that would see her manage his career for three years including the magnificent 2013/2014 season during which he lifted a record equalling five trophies in a single season.
With a young family in Sheffield and the travelling associated with the World Snooker Tour she saw an opportunity in 2015 to open an academy in the City, supporting a new crop of young Chinese players in their career. In February 2016 Victoria’s Snooker Academy was born located in the heart of the City Centre a five minute walk from the iconic Crucible Theatre. Seven Star tables and home to some of the most promising young players in the game. Victoria says ‘I had a lot of young players come to me say they wanted to live and practice in the City Centre, we supported them off the table to enable them to produce their best form on the table’.
The players became successful and Victoria’s Snooker Academy became the first choice location for professionals and top amateurs practising in the City. The academy became so successful that in the summer of 2019 they moved to new larger premises, Victoria adds, ‘I had more professionals wanting to be based here but we didn’t have the room, luckily I found an ideal place in the City centre over two floors so we could add more tables and invite more players to join us.’
Trophies for the young crop of players soon followed including the 2021 Masters Title for Yan Bingtao, 2021 UK Championship and German Masters title in 2022 for Zhao Xintong and the 2022 European Masters title for Fan Zhengyi. How about plans for the future? ‘When we started our professionals were exclusively from China, now our success and world class facilities attract the best players from all over the world, we now have players from Ukraine, Thailand, Russia, Germany, Latvia and many other countries across the world, we welcome everybody and it is great to see how snooker is developing. Our academy has such a friendly atmosphere with players willing to play and learn from each other, they become friends off the table but fierce competitors on it. We have also developed this website to tell the stories of our professional players and we are proud we are the official distributor of Star products in the UK and Europe. We will be adding more products to the website in the coming months including merchandise for our popular players’.
The future is indeed bright and we look forward to telling the story of Victoria’s Snooker Academy through this website and our social media. Over twenty years in the making, Victoria’s Snooker Academy is going from strength to strength.