The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 42

42 THE OBSERVER SUNDAY 12 APRIL 1992 A unique talent prepares to put snooker's leading lights in the shade when the world championship begins this week mmnn soft wm nlbO Hugh Mcllvanney Sports Journalist of the Year, meets a young snooker champion whose ordinary background cannot hide his extraordinary ability frame of mind: Stephen Hendry Is 'probably the greatest player under pressure we have ewer Photograph by Mike King BEING the best in the world at something is a difficult secret to keep. Away from snooker championships, Stephen Hendry svxwcx tide sacV. "ymvo ttve ordinariness of an earlier life, ftappy to let his talent travel incognito. But even on home ground at an unpretentious club in an industrial area of Stirling the effort can never quite succeed, and not just because the 23-year-old in jerkin and jeans will eventually detach himself from the bantering company of working-class friends and drive off in a Mercedes. The real separating factor is an unforced sense of himself as someone remarkable, a strength of presence that is the inevitable product of knowing there is one highly paid activity at which no one alive is superior.

It was noted of Rocky Marci-ano in his years as an unbeaten fighter that as he walked down the aisle to the ring he was often smiling. He knew, said a distinguished writer, that when the heavyweight champion of the world defended his title it was a solemn moment, but he found it hard to forget how strong he was. With a figure so lean that a height of nearly six feet goes with a weight of lOst, and a face so unintimidating that the slightest ruffling of his fair hair can evoke a celebrated resemblance to Stan Laurel, Hendry does not look much like The Rock. But his smile, too, draws on a pragmatic recognition of his own uniqueness. Playing cards with other pros while the snooker circus is on tour, he is an unassertive member of the group and yet, an experienced observer told me, 'the bottom line is that somehow he is always behaving like the Such implicit respect is based on more than the precocity that made him (in 1990) the youngest ever winner of the World Championship and has enabled him to amass more than 30 titles by the age at which Steve Davis was achieving his first big breakthrough in the UK Championship of 1980.

It is his unrivalled capacity to perform when the strains of competition are at their most intense that encourages the toughest cases in the game to honour him as a man apart. 'He is probably the greatest player under pressure we have ever declares Clive Ever-ton, the BBC commentator and journalist widely admired for the soundness of his judgment. 'Forget any comparison with the oldies, who were helped by matches lasting about a week. When it comes down to the best of nine frames, no one is better than Hendry at building up to a THE SPANISH have never been shy of taking the bull by the horns, but it remains to be seen whether their most powerful matador can survive an imminent public goring in the Olympic ring. Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, is in danger of being felled by a double whammy, a new book and a television documentary which are designed to do for his public image what similar disclosures did for that of the Austrian President, Dr Kurt Waldheim.

The book, to be published in 11 languages, chronicles what the authors call 'the secret past' of Samaranch, detailing his support of the dictator Franco and his membership of Movimiento, the Spanish fascist organisation. The British authors, Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings, claim he was an active blueshirt for nearly 40 years. 'Even when Davis. Hendry forecasts that the coronation scheduled for Sheffield at the beginning of May will concern himself or one of those three but he does not attempt to conceal his conviction that a second supreme title is well within his scope. His status as the greatest break-maker snooker has seen is all but undisputed (Ian Doyle takes pleasure in reminding everyone that his prodigy has run up 153 centuries in major competitions over six years, compared with Steve Davis's 165 in 14 years) and a defeat of Parrott on his way to victory in the Benson and Hedges Irish Masters last weekend confirmed that the timing of his preparation is right.

He has had a fairly rewarding season but not the flood of success that last year brought him to the Crucible drained by involvement in too many important finals. His current haul of seven titles includes two in ranked events, against five at this stage of 1991, and that discrepancy may be the key to his prospects. 'I am playing very well and I think my head is a lot and regular driver of its leading member, went on incredulously about the crookedness of the cue near the ferrule. 'If you picked it off the rack in a public snooker hall, you'd put it 'What John knows about said Hendry, 'I could write on the back of my But he admits that other pros find the cue, which he bought in his schooldays for 50, an astonishing object. 'It's a cheap bit of wood and I suppose it is crap but it's the one I've always with, It is the weapon he will rely on to spare him the agonies that followed quarter-final defeat by Steve James in Sheffield last year.

'It's the closest I've come to crying since I was a he told me. 'The match finished about 1 1 o'clock and I couldn't handle staying down there, so we drove home through the night. Then I locked myself away for a couple of days, sulked The tone of self-accusation seemed to have a purpose. Stephen Hendry is hurting himself now with the intention of hurting others later. final and before you realise it you are thinking about what you will have to do next day if you're not involved in the final.

Practice is mainly preparing yourself to guard against that. The danger is never more real than at the start of a tournament and Hendry is not playacting when he talks of the need to be tough on himself when he goes out at the Crucible on Saturday to meet the unfancied Stephen Murphy. If Murphy is dismissed, there will be a week before a probable meeting with James Wattana (perhaps the most threatening challenger outside Hendry's quartet of favourites) and it will be spent in Edinburgh and Stirling, where he is assured of a familiar environment, warm support from his mates and girlfriend Mandy almost everything but awe. 'Look at that cue, it's said John Carroll last week, picking up the unprepossessing item that earned a 10,000 reward for the man who returned it after it was stolen some time ago. Carroll, the Doyle stable's road manager End of the line for past masters Janice Hale on how the tables have turned for some of the big names IT SEEMS likely that the claimant of the 150,000 first prize at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre will come from among the winners of the nine world-ranking tournaments played to date this season.

Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis, John Parrott and Jimmy White have each won two of this season's titles, and the most dangerous of the Crucible's debutants, the Thai sudden-death decider, at taking on the right shot even when it is terribly dangerous and then getting it Nothing in Hendry's conver-sauow. oev x.vjo da-js vcvScotYuvd last week was more striking than his uncomplicated assumption that, for him, the pressure of the biggest occasions is not an enemy but an almost indispensable ally, something he must have before he can be sure of reaching the true limits of his gifts: 'It's good when a major championship comes down to two tables but it is when there is only one that I get the real high, that I can feel the best coming out of my The truth about his chemistry began to show nine years ago on expeditions to pro-am tournaments in alien locations like King's Cross, Ilford and Barking. Having taken up snooker as a 12-year-old after being bought a quarter-size table for Christmas, he was Scottish amateur champion by the age of 15. But his skills appeared to shrivel around London and he and his father often found an overnight stay in cheap bed-and-breakfast accommodation followed by sickening disappointment at the table and a depressing journey back to Edinburgh on the sleeper. Such miseries were worsened by the fact that his grannies and the rest of the family were chipping in to finance the trips and by the haunting possibility that he might be no different from other Scots players he remembers as 'cracking, losing their bottle' when they left their own patch.

However, though he identifies the long slogs on the train and the unfamiliar surroundings as serious handicaps against locals who played regularly in the halls used for the competitions, it is significant that he recalls suffering more from the lack of a concentrated atmosphere in places where any number of tables might be in action, with people eddying around them in small currents of indifference. 'If some of the fellas who beat me had tried to do it with only one table lit up and a large crowd around us, it might have been a very different he says, with a slightly cold expression in the steady blue eyes. What happened subsequently makes that claim easy to accept. Once his professional career was on its way and he had placed himself under the management of Ian Doyle a Glaswegian whose faith in his own opinions is vast and unlikely to be diminished by the acquisition of a stable of snooker players that he had risen to become an IOC vice-president, touring the world as a guardian of the Olympic ideal, Samaranch continued to raise his right arm in the fascist salute at political gatherings in Spain. In The Lords of the Rings (Simon and Schuster, 14.99), they say that under Samaranch the Olympic movement has taken on many of the characteristics of a political dictatorship and that Samaranch himself has 'destroyed democracy within the IOC'.

There are also allegations that the IOC have suppressed scandals about drug abuse so as not to frighten off the sponsors who pour millions into the Olympic coffers. It would be naive to assume that Samaranch is the only ex-fascist in the 94-member freemasonry of wealth, privilege and clubby exclusivity that constitutes the IOC. But, while most of the allegations have he said, 'I had to make them all myself' The players were so grumpy that all but three of them then declined an offer to play a friendly rugby union match against the Streat-ham Croydon club. There was more harmony for another player, however. Ricky Williams, the menacing linebacker, who plays cello to concert standard, attended a student performance in Hammersmith to calm his nerves before yesterday's game agairst Mirmingham Fire.

Alan Hubbard, Journalist of the Year, whether Spain's veteran of the IOC will to survive revelations his political past A man apart in the right includes nine ranked in the top 40 Hendry's combination of ideal temperament and God-given purity of technique thrust him up through the rankings at a dizzying rate. Apart from adjustments enforced by growing taller, he detects no substantial alterations in a cue action that developed naturally without tuition and which the ultimate coach, Frank Callan, pronounced essentially unimprovable. His stance, with the right leg braced straight, the left flexed to let his knee point slightly outwards, and the back bent to the horizontal from slim hips, is orthodox enough. But the extreme suppleness of his body and the total absence of any encumbering flesh give full scope to hand-eye co-ordination rendered almost flawless by the stillness of his head through the shot. That classic and consistent technical quality distinguishes him from even his boyhood hero, Jimmy White, the reigning world champion John Par-rott and the man who was once lord of all he surveyed, Steve been heard before, their concentration in one highly contentious package and the timing of their publication are certain to infuriate and embarrass Samaranch; though perhaps not as much as a subsequent World In Action documentary, to be screened next month, which will portray the IOC as an arcane oligarchy riddled with graft and greed.

'The IOC has become an anachronism and should be replaced by a more democratic ruling argues Jennings, an investigative journalist also involved with the World In Action programme. These are deeply troubled GUESTS at the annual Wisden dinner last week held their breath when Graeme Wright announced he was retiring as editor. Who would take up the hallowed office? Matthew Engel, the devilishly maverick Guardian writer, announced it was he. 'First shock result of the he said. 'A safe Conservative seat falling to the candidate from the Monster Raving Loony Olympic asks president manage about fresher than it was last he tola me in Mir ling.

'Quite honestly, I believe I am the best player in the world. Sheffield, where you must keep your hunger and your concentration over 17 days of long matches, should give me the right conditions for showing that I am. If my head is right and my game is right, the only one who can beat me is myself. I don't mean to let that He acknowledges readily that, although Steve Davis's six world championships were gained when the competition was not as severe as it is now, 'to be remembered up there with Steve I'll have to win the title two or three more The daily practice sessions at Doyle's club in Stirling have far less to do with the technical side of his game ('I know 99 per cent of the shots now') than with honing concentration. 'Keeping tightly focused for long periods is a he said.

'Unless you work on it, your mind can be different for every frame and sometimes your head's just not there at all. You might be behind in a semi his statement last week in which he seemed to be soft-pedalling on the Katrin Krabbe issue, suggesting that the initial suspensions of her and two other German athletes were 'hasty'. Samaranch, president since 1980, has not yet announced whether he wishes to stand for a further term (an election is due next year), but he will not want his dynasty to end in ignominy or controversy. In Barcelona last week, organisers expressed relief at the arrest in France of three senior ETA leaders, including one Francisco Garmendia who, allegedly, had threatened to turn the Olympics into a bloodbath. 'We are confident now that nothing will said one spokesperson, herself a Basque.

However, Spanish security services believe that Samaranch remains at the top of ETA's Olympic hit-list. In the first 'I don't even know the Portsmouth chairman's he says, 'whereas Bob Murray, the Sunderland chairman, is a wonderful man who gets on very well with the Mike Neasom, the News football correspondent, says: 'It's up and down, but Portsmouth are sensitive to criticism. My relationship with Jim Gregory, the chairman, doesn't exist. drivel that comes out of the dummy's mouth. My husband is much funnier than the scriptwriters who produce the childish material.

They should get him to write the scripts. I'm sure he could do a better But is he funnier than Gareth Chilcott, the chubby rugby prop who makes his pantomime debut, as a debt collector in Cinderella, in Bath this winter? times for Samaranch and the Olympic movement, exacerbated by the recent resignation of one of its senior figures, the United States' IOC member Robert Helmick, following allegations that he had used his position for financial gain. There are also serious concerns about the 70-year-old Samaranch's health and his personal safety during the Games, which begin on 25 July. Spanish newspapers have reported that he has the pri mary symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and some of his recent judgments have worried members of his 'cabinet', especially Olympics to be held in western Europe since those in Munich 20 years ago, when 11 Israeli athletes were assassinated, the fear has been that both the high-profile Basque and the less violent Catalan separatist factions would use the presence of some 50 heads of state, including Spain's King Juan Carlos, to demonstrate grievances and perhaps sabotage the Games. With the opening ceremony just 101 days away, nerves are already taut.

The hilltop Olympic Stadium will be like a fortress, with 10,000 police and 5,000 civil guardsmen drafted in to Barcelona to supplement 16,000 security forces already stationed there, working alongside the Israeli secret service, Mossad, the SAS and American SWAT teams. From Tuesday, all Olympic sites, including the Olympic Stadium, which has been attracting 300 visitors a day, Another Storey, Chris, of Sunderland Chamber of Commerce, has presented the team with another loyalty dilemma. He says businessmen want the football team's name changed to Sunderland City. Storey (no relation) argues that, as Sunderland was named a city in February, 'it would attract national attention. As a child, you learn which places are towns and James Wattana, has won the otner.

Past champions such as Terry Griffiths, winner on his first attempt in 1979, or Dennis Taylor, who prevailed heroically on the final black against Davis in 1985, do not seem to possess the firepower any longer to go all the way. Four of the Crucible's former champions went out in the qualifying competition. John Spencer, reduced by illness to a shadow of the champion he became for the third time 15 years ago, did not win a frame against a Norwegian, Bjorn L'Orange. Cliff Thorburn, the Canadian who was the first (and only) overseas winner of the title in 1980, lost an eight hour, 50 minute dogfight to an 18-year-old Scottish rookie, Chris Small, who qualified. Twice world champion Alex Higgins was defeated by another young Scot, Alan McManus, and it is even possible that he has played his last championship.

His latest much postponed disciplinary hearing is due immediately after the championship, with Gavin Lightman QC, who issued dire warnings the last time Higgins appeared before him, as sole arbiter. Joe Johnson's extraordinary 18-12 win over Davis in the 1986 final was not an overture to other triumphs, but to a more forcible separation from the easy-going life he had always led than he could endure. A heart attack almost killed him last summer. He soldiered on rather than collect on the insurance, but was denied a return to the Crucible by Mick Price, the world No 82, who beat him 10-9 on the final pink. Snooker's young bloods are less overawed by the game's celebrities than they used to be.

Peter Ebdon, a 21 -year-old Londoner with a fine record as an amateur, has reached the Crucible in his debut season and will play Davis. 'I'm looking forward to the says Ebdon, 'but I'm not going just for that. I'm going there to Divided loyalties on road to the twin towers Samaranch: Under fire will be closed to the public. At Barcelona's airport visitors are greeted by wanted posters for 'Las Terroristas de During July and August, an even more familiar sight than the Seat Toledo, official vehicle of the Games, will be the snub-nosed Saracens of the riot police. However, at the moment it is not the spectre of Munich that is haunting the IOC, but the sound of skeletons rattling in cupboards.

which are cities through the names of their football teams'. But Bob Murray says: 'I know Swansea did it in 1970, but the vast majority of supporters here won't have This view is confirmed by Robert Nixon, the editor of the aptly named Sunderland fanzine, We're All Going To Wembley, who says: 'It's a silly-sounding name National Asthma Campaign, he asked politicians for sponsorship. All wished him well but most turned him down. John Major said he 'simply cannot afford to do so'; Margaret Thatcher, whose foundation raises millions, ditto; Paddy Ashdown said he received 1,000 such letters a week; and Neil Kinnock, whose latest job application ended in the bin, sent a cheque. YOU WOULD have thought that the owner of two newspapers whose local teams might contest the FA Cup Final would be a happy man.

But, while Sir Richard Storey, who owns the Portsmouth News and the Sunderland Echo, wishes Portsmouth well in their quest to join Sunderland at Wembley, he is finding it hard to love the south coast team. Monarchs out of tune as discord reigns Spitting mad over Frank's image Charitable Kinnock cheques out COULD the American honeymoon be on the wane? Word reaches Ihiu'line from within the London Monarchs camp that all is mil well with our adopted behemoths ol the gridiron. At a team meeting on Monday, I lie iiiai ui hat Stan oni il.niu-il bitterly to anyone who would h. ten that the ul i oiiieiline. a record eiflii in Mnvei in losing last wiil from illl I 1 1 i Mil I wik I Im- i mi lmi: in FRANK BRUNO'S wife, Laura, is mitred that our perennially laughing heavyweight is perceived as a buffoon.

In a new book on Bruno, Eye Of The Tiger, compiled with the fighter's long-time scriptwriter, Norman Giller, Laura says: 'A lot of people have found that he is nobody's fool. Frank laughs at the way he is represented by his Spitting Image dummy, but I get annoyed by some of the SEDLEY LEGRAND, an asthmatic, will not stop running when he completes the London Marathon today. He will then run right around the world. Legrand and his team will first circle the British Isles over 16 months and will embark on their world tour by going through the Channel Tunnel on its scheduled opening day in September, 1994. To raise money for the.