November 5th 2024.
This month, snooker fans will see the return of Zhao Xintong to the UK Championship. After being suspended from the sport due to his involvement in a match-fixing scandal, the 27-year-old is finally making his comeback to professional events.
In 2021, Zhao made a name for himself by winning the UK Championship and followed it up with a German Masters title in early 2022. However, his career suddenly came to a halt when he was suspended in January 2023. The investigation into match-fixing was still ongoing, and Zhao was ultimately found guilty of being part of a scheme to fix matches and placing bets on snooker games.
As a result, Zhao received a 20-month ban, which, compared to the longer bans given to other players involved in the scandal, was relatively mild. Since then, he has been out of the professional circuit and only recently returned to the amateur circuit. His comeback has been nothing short of impressive, as he won the Q Tour Europe Event Three in Sweden, even making a 147 along the way.
Now, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association and World Snooker Tour have announced that the winners of Q Tour events before the UK Championship will earn a spot in the qualifiers. This means that Zhao, along with Andrew Petrov and Dylan Emery, will be competing for a chance to play in the UK Championship.
In addition, other amateur players who have been offered spots in the qualifiers are Iulian Boiko, Daniel Womersley, Hamza Ilyas, Oliver Sykes, Igor Figueiredo, Habib Sabah Hamood, and Vladislav Gradniari. There is also a spot up for grabs for the winner of the Q Tour Europe Event Four in Manchester from 8-10 November. And the highest-ranked player on the Q Tour Europe rankings after the Manchester event will also receive an invitation, along with any other players needed to fill the spots in the draw.
Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting development in the world of snooker.
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