Vera Selby

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Vera Selby
birthday 13th April 1930 (age 90)
place of birth Richmond ,EnglandEngland
nationality EnglandEngland England
Nickname (s) Queen of Green
Active time ? until about 1981
Success in snooker
World Championship 2 ×
Success in English Billiards
World Championship 8 ×

Vera Selby MBE (born March 13, 1930 in Richmond , England ) is an English former English billiards and snooker player . She has won the Women's World Snooker Championship twice and the Women's English Billiards World Championship eight times. It is not related to the snooker player of the same name, Mark Selby .

Career

Selby first came into contact with billiards at the age of six. Her uncle had a table in the basement of his house in Newcastle, where she often sat and watched. At the age of 36 she saw the former British amateur billiards and snooker champion Alf Nolan play and trained her from then on.

At first she played English Billiards and was world champion nine times in this billiards discipline. At the same time, however, she also began to play snooker and in 1976 became the winner of the first edition of a women's world championship, then still called the Women's World Open , in Middlesbrough . In the final, she beat Muriel Haseltine 4-0. That made her double world champion this year. She won her second snooker world title in the third edition in 1981, when she clearly beat 19-year-old Mandy Fisher 3-0 in the final. At the age of 51, she was the oldest world champion in all of sport at the time.

She had a brief career as a snooker commentator on BBC television in the early 1980s. She is a qualified top level snook referee and referee instructor and has volunteered as chair of the North East Billiards and Snooker Association . In 2014, at the age of 84, she received an award for her life's work in billiards at the Women's World Cup in Leeds . She commented on this unexpected honor with the words:

“I thought I was just going for a day out on the train. I told them that they'd obviously looked at my age, thought that I couldn't be much longer for this world and that they'd better do something about it. It does occur, doesn't it? "

“I thought I was just going on a day trip by train. I told them that they had apparently seen my age and thought that I wouldn't be with them much longer and that they should do something about that. It does happen, doesn't it? "

- Vera Selby : Mike Amos, The Northern Echo

In 2009 Selby was named the first female "master" in the 400-year history of the traditional Fellmongers' Guild in Richmond.

In 2016, the Queen made her Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to billiards . Prince Charles personally put the medal on her. She remembered her conversation with the prince: “I thought it was funny because I was well dressed for the occasion and he said, 'You don't look like a snooker player!' to which I replied: 'We're not all macho guys!' "

Even at the age of 85, she still played and divorced regularly and was the coach of five men's clubs.

Private

She was born in Richmond, North Yorkshire , where her father ran the Freeman, Hardy and Willis shoe store. She studied art and design at Leeds University before becoming a lecturer in art, textile and clothing design at the former Newcastle Polytechnic . She took early retirement at the age of 53.

Others

Selby has been committed to equal rights for women throughout his life and has been able to achieve small, personal successes for them. In the early days of equality, for example, the situation arose when she, accompanied by her partner Ray Lennox , was refused by the bouncer when she visited the semi-finals of the North-East Championships with the words: No access for women . After your loud protest, he said he had to get someone off the committee. Selby recorded this in one of her poems with the words:

"They took it to the secretary,
His voice could not be clearer;
No women are allowed in here
We only let in Vera. "

“They put it in front of the secretary,
his saying couldn't be clearer;
Women are not allowed here
, only Vera is allowed in. "

- Vera Selby : Mike Amos, The Northern Echo

She was the first woman to be able to punch black or any other color. Commenting on this, it was testified, a male spectator in the midst of the lush surroundings of the Nairobi Snooker Palace said:

"Good God, it's the end of Empire!"

"Good God, this is the end of the (British) Empire!"

- Vera Selby : Mike Amos, The Northern Echo

successes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Mike Amos: Green Party . In: Northern Echo , November 27, 2014. Archived from the original on July 20, 2019. 
  2. ↑ a b World Champions. WWS World Women's Championship - Roll of Honor. WWS, November 29, 2018, archived from the original on January 3, 2019 ; accessed on July 21, 2019 (English).
  3. ↑ a b c World Ladies Billiards Champions. World Billiards , June 15, 2015, archived from the original on January 19, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2019 (English).
  4. ^ Birthdays - Court & Social (en) . In: The Times , March 12, 2001.  
  5. ↑ a b c Tom Ough: 85-year-old snooker champion Vera Selby reveals longevity secret as she earns MBE . In: ChronicleLive , February 13, 2016. Archived from the original on February 14, 2016. 
  6. ↑ a b c d Mike Amos: Cueing up to listen to first lady of snooker (en) . In: Durham County Publications (England) , July 6, 2004. 
  7. ^ History. World Women's Snooker (WWS) on November 29, 2018, archived from the original on January 28, 2019 ; accessed on July 21, 2019 (English).
  8. ↑ a b Champion In A Man's World. Meetings Archive 2012. Soroptomist International, February 16, 2012, archived from the original on April 10, 2016 ; accessed on July 20, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Hector Nunns: Vera Selby MBE. Inside Snooker, June 13, 2015, archived from the original on April 21, 2017 ; accessed on August 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Selby, Vera
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Queen of Green
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English snooker player and world champion
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Richmond , England