Ronnie O'Sullivan extends Crucible record at the 2024 World Championship

Credit: George Wood/Getty ImagesCredit: George Wood/Getty Images
Credit: George Wood/Getty Images | George Wood/Getty Images
‘The Rocket’ keeps rewriting the record books

The greatest of all time Ronnie O’Sullivan continues to break and set new records in professional snooker.

O’Sullivan breezed through to the last 16 of the 2024 World Snooker Championship with a crushing 10-1 victory against young Welsh qualifier Jackson Page on Thursday afternoon in Sheffield. The 48-year-old will face Ryan Day in the last 16, the 28th time he’s got through to that stage of the competition.

Not only is O’Sullivan aiming to win an unprecedented eighth world title in snooker’s modern era but also become just the fourth player in the history of the sport to claim the UK Championship, Masters and World Championship all within the same season. Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry (twice) and Mark Williams are the only cueists to have achieved this remarkable feat.

However, world number one O’Sullivan merely turning up for his opening round tie with Page further extended his record for the number of total and consecutive Crucible appearances.

Last year he set the outright record, but O’Sullivan has now taken his tally to 32 Crucible appearances, and all of those have come successively.

John Higgins - having faced Jamie Jones in the 2024 opening round - and Steve Davis are next on the list for the most main draw appearances in Sheffield with 30.

Throughout his entire professional career that started in the 1992/93 season, O’Sullivan has never failed to reach the Crucible for snooker’s blue riband event.

Even as a rookie, a 16-year-old O’Sullivan won 10 qualifying matches to reach the fabled arena in 1993. On his Crucible debut, he lost 10-7 to Alan McManus who had reached the semi-finals the year before and would do again during that installment.

Having won a trio of qualifying round matches for the 1994 edition, O’Sullivan got his first win at the venue over former champion Dennis Taylor in round one before losing to John Parrott in the last 16.

In 1995, O’Sullivan was a Crucible seed for the first time and he has remained ever since.

Prior to his most recent appearance in 2024, O’Sullivan has reached the one-table set up at the Crucible (at least the semi-finals) an incredible 13 times.

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