91热爆

But speaking on the eve of the tournament, O'Sullivan said that while he'd enjoy winning the event the only time he was truly happy in life was when he was not playing snooker. O'Sullivan added that he got little enjoyment out of the game which has made him a millionaire, and was feeling depressed.

The notion that a sportsman who has devoted most of his 25 years to being the best in his profession would get little satisfaction from winning the world championship might appear strange but the list of sports stars who have admitted to not enjoying their game is surprisingly long and varied.

Footballer Stan Collymore has recently retired saying he is depressed; Sam Torrance and Berhard Langer have long complained of suffering from the golfing yips, the inability to knock in a short putt, while snooker player Patsy Fagan had a mental problem that prevented him using a rest during matches.

Sitting in his mother's conservatory in Kent, former international footballer Tony Cascarino admits that he often used to hope that his teammates would not pass to him as he knew he would give the ball away.

Cascarino has written a very frank account of his life as a footballer, Full Time - the secret life of Tony Cascarino, in which he says he suffered from paranoia throughout his career.

"I had this little demon in my head throughout my career", he told me. "It would start with the first bad pass, and then I'd think I'll give the next pass away as well and then I'm thinking, that's two bad passes I'll have made and if I give the next one away the fans are going to start, so I was thinking like this before I'd even made the second mistake."

Despite winning more caps for the Republic of Ireland than anyone else, Cascarino says that for much of his career he wasn't a very good footballer, but psychological problems can affect even world champions.

Eric Bristow has won the world darts championship five times. Today he is outside the world's top 32 players, a product not of age he says but a condition he calls dartitis. "My arm started to lock. I'd get up to the board and I couldn't let my first dart go. My arm would come back but instead of following through it just stayed there. It was frightening," he told me.

Bristow says he got depressed and was on the verge of giving up the game, but kept going after a chat with a friend and says he is now firmly on the way back to being amongst the world's best.

Despite their problems, neither Cascarino nor Bristow bothered to turn to a psychologist for help.

Bristow says he wanted to work through his problem himself while Cascarino says that in the macho world of football, it wasn't the done thing to ask for psychological help. Psychologists are however playing a greater role in all areas of sport in the UK.

Frank Dick, president of the European Athletics Coaching Committee, says that the days when one coach would deal with the entire development of an athlete are virtually over and that teams of advisers are now being brought in to aid top performers, to make them not just more rounded athletes, but more rounded individuals.

He told me, "The real trick is to encourage kids to understand that they have to be able to adapt to whatever stress hits their life. They have in the past been extremely protected. All they're aware of in the outside world is the adulation, and of course the other side of that, the impact of people insulting them, coming out with smart remarks.

"The people who wish to hurt you will figure out a way to do so, they'll get under your skin. In my own experience, emotional stressers have got a far greater impact on the overall well-being of a youngster than any other stresser - intellectual or physical."

A key emotional time for many athletes is when their careers are over and they have to adjust to the outside world, a problem that appears to be particularly difficult for cricketers, who have the highest rate of suicide of any sport.

A grisly list of batsmen and bowlers who have taken their own lives has been compiled by David Frith, who told Today that the intense nature of the game, where players are cocooned with team-mates for days on end means they feel the loss of camaraderie much more than other sports stars.

The problem has been recognised by the Professional Cricketers' Association, who are aiming to increase the funds available to help top class cricketers adjust to life after the game.

That their heroes suffer from depression, anxiety, paranoia and an assortment of other psychological conditions will perhaps surprise many sports fans who often can't see beyond the pampered life and high salaries.

But what all athletes have in common with you and I is that at the end of the day they are only human beings, and therefore susceptible to all the feelings that we often experience.