Stephen Hendry: I Put Snooker Before Everything, Even Family
The High Performance Podcast
High Performance
4.6 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Hendry won seven world snooker titles in nine years. He didn't just reach the top of snooker, he made the top his permanent address for almost a decade. But this conversation goes far beyond the trophies.
We're revisiting this incredible chat with Stephen where he tells Jake and Damian what it actually felt like to be that dominant, why he deliberately kept himself cold and aloof from every rival, and what the relentless pursuit of winning ultimately cost him. And why if given the choice, he'd do it again.
This is an unflinching portrait of what total dedication looks like from the inside — and one of the most honest conversations we've ever had on High Performance.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The reason why there's so few people can win relentlessly is they sacrifice even family to get to, |
| 0:08.6 | you know, Snooker's my life, number one, that came first. |
| 0:11.8 | Even before my wife, my kids, everything, obviously they ended to the detriment of my marriage and everything. |
| 0:17.2 | You know, it was all about me. |
| 0:18.5 | It's very cold, but it has to be that. |
| 0:22.6 | For many people, Stephen Hendry is the greatest snooker player who's ever lived. |
| 0:27.3 | Seven world titles in nine years. |
| 0:29.3 | Seven in nine years. |
| 0:30.8 | But Stephen didn't just win. |
| 0:32.7 | He made winning look inevitable and losing look impossible. |
| 0:37.2 | But you know what? Behind that cold, |
| 0:39.4 | unreadable face was a story of obsession, of sacrifice, of a man who gave everything, his social |
| 0:46.2 | life, his teenage years, even his marriage was given away to be the best. So what does it actually |
| 0:53.0 | take to dominate a sport so completely? Who do you |
| 0:56.0 | become in the process? And if you had the chance to live all over again, would you still make so |
| 1:01.3 | many sacrifices for success? This is a fascinating conversation about what high performance |
| 1:07.8 | can actually cost you. Welcome, snooker legend, Stephen Hendry. |
| 1:17.2 | Sometimes found it difficult to put on a genuine smile after I won the big titles, |
| 1:21.3 | because to me it was the climax of all the work I'd put in, and it was my job to go there and win. |
| 1:30.0 | And sometimes after I won on a Sunday night, I'd be back practicing the Monday for the next one because I was, |
| 1:33.2 | I had that greed, which I think individual sportsmen, if they're going to be serial winners have to |
| 1:38.8 | have, they can never be satisfied. And I was never satisfied. So do you think that anyone can learn to have that |
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