Gao Yang has defeated Brian Cini 5-3 within the last of the 2025 WSF Championship to say the most important title of his profession in Morocco and safe his return to the skilled World Snooker Tour for the 2025/26 and 2026/27 seasons.
Having beforehand reached the ultimate of the Championship 12 months in the past, Gao was in a position to go one step additional in 2025 following a high-quality last so as to add victory within the Open Championship occasion to his prior success on the WSF Junior Championship in Malta 5 years earlier. He turns into the primary participant to have claimed each titles throughout their profession and underlines his file as probably the most profitable participant ever on the World Snooker Federation Championships.
Gao’s reward will see him now rejoin the skilled circuit for the primary time because the finish of his preliminary two-year spell in 2022, and additional extends a run which has seen the match dominated by gamers from Asia, with 5 of its six stagings now received by gamers from the area. He follows within the footsteps of Luo Honghao (2018), Si Jiahui (2022), Ma Hailong (2023) and final 12 months’s winner Ka Wai Cheung (2024) to carry the trophy.
The outanding performer through the week, Gao hit a tournament-best 5 century breaks on his technique to the title match for a second successive 12 months, together with the general excessive break of 140 throughout his quarter-final victory in opposition to Stuart Watson.
Awaiting him within the last was Malta’s Brian Cini, who had beforehand competed on the occasion on house soil in 2018 and 2020, reaching the final 32 on each events. The 28-year-old, who’s a a number of nationwide champion in his house nation, enoyed various notable victories on his technique to the title match, together with in opposition to former skilled Sean O’Sullivan and final 12 months’s WSF Championship semi-finalist Daniel Womersley.
The decisive match would show to be a high-quality affair, with the opening frames shared with breaks of 67 and 78 by Cini, sandwiched by runs of 52 and 60 from Gao because the gamers headed to the interval stage at 2-2.
The match would show to be a extra cagey affair on the resumption of play, with Cini notably claiming the sixth body from behind on the colors to as soon as once more draw stage at 3-3.
In the end, it might be Gao’s day, nevertheless, as he responded by successful the next two frames to seal victory and safe his return to the World Snooker Tour following a three-year-absence.
Held on the Radisson Blu Resort Saïdia Seaside in Morocco, the sixth staging of snooker’s most prestigious newbie championships attracted roughly 250 entries from across the globe throughout three competitions, with round 600 matches accomplished throughout 15 days.
Victory for Gao completes a memorable fortnight in Morocco which had beforehand seen Eire’s Leone Crowley and Thailand’s Mink Nutcharut declare the titles within the Junior and Girls’s Championships respectively.
The World Snooker Federation wish to thank all of its companions who’ve supported the occasion, specifically Morocco Snooker and its president Mr Mourad Mahi, with out whom the staging of the Championships wouldn’t have been doable.
