Glory For Gao at WSF Championship
Gao Yang has defeated Brian Cini 5-3 in the final of the 2025 WSF Championship to claim the biggest title of his career in Morocco and secure his return to the professional World Snooker Tour for the 2025/26 and 2026/27 seasons.
Having previously reached the final of the Championship 12 months ago, Gao was able to go one step further in 2025 following a high-quality final to add victory in the Open Championship event to his prior success at the WSF Junior Championship in Malta five years earlier. He becomes the first player to have claimed both titles during their career and underlines his record as the most successful player ever at the World Snooker Federation Championships.
Gao’s reward will see him now rejoin the professional circuit for the first time since the end of his initial two-year spell in 2022, and further extends a run which has seen the tournament dominated by players from Asia, with five of its six stagings now won by players from the region. He follows in the footsteps of Luo Honghao (2018), Si Jiahui (2022), Ma Hailong (2023) and last year’s winner Ka Wai Cheung (2024) to lift the trophy.
The outanding performer during the week, Gao hit a tournament-best five century breaks on his way to the title match for a second successive year, including the overall high break of 140 during his quarter-final victory against Stuart Watson.
Awaiting him in the final was Malta’s Brian Cini, who had previously competed at the event on home soil in 2018 and 2020, reaching the last 32 on both occasions. The 28-year-old, who is a multiple national champion in his home country, enoyed a number of notable victories on his way to the title match, including against former professional Sean O’Sullivan and last year’s WSF Championship semi-finalist Daniel Womersley.
The decisive match would prove 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 as the players headed to the interval level at 2-2.
The match would prove to be a more cagey affair on the resumption of play, with Cini notably claiming the sixth frame from behind on the colours to once again draw level at 3-3.
Ultimately, it would be Gao’s day, however, as he responded by winning the following two frames to seal victory and secure his return to the World Snooker Tour following a three-year-absence.
Gao said: “This tournament has many former professional players and so it is very hard to win. Now I have a chance to start again. I have moved to Victoria’s Snooker Academy in Sheffield and play more often against professional players like Si Jiahui, Zhang Anda and Zhao Xintong in practice which is very important. My target for the next two years is to get into the top 64.”
Held at the Radisson Blu Resort Saïdia Beach in Morocco, the sixth staging of snooker’s most prestigious amateur championships attracted approximately 250 entries from around the globe across three competitions, with around 600 matches completed across 15 days.
Victory for Gao completes a memorable fortnight in Morocco which had previously seen Ireland’s Leone Crowley and Thailand’s Mink Nutcharut claim the titles in the Junior and Women’s Championships respectively.
The World Snooker Federation would like to thank all of its partners who have supported the event, in particular Morocco Snooker and its president Mr Mourad Mahi, without whom the staging of the Championships would not have been possible.
