60 Minutes - 60 Minutes Presents: The Power of Grimsby, Lourdes, The South Dakota Kid

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Sharyn Alfonsi travels to the coast of Grimsby, England, where the world's largest offshore wind farm now powers millions of homes a day in the U.K. Bill Whitaker reports on the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations where world-renowned doctors and researchers conduct decade-long investigations into the countless claims of cures. Jon Wertheim profiles Shane Van Boening, the top-ranked pool player in the world for 2022, and explores how pool is trying to shed its rambling, gambling image and thrive as a proper professional sport. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Jane Pauley. Listen up! Every Monday, tune in to our Sunday Morning Podcast, offering extended interviews, in-depth conversation, and inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile, because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday Morning podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the largest crop of offshore wind turbines in the world, in the open seas off northeast England. It is hypnotizing. More than 300 turbines spread across 335 square miles, designed to generate enough electricity to help power more than 2 million homes a day. In this uncertain economic moment, we had questions about how well it all works. Do you believe in miracles? Well, 60 Minutes traveled to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France, where 70 medical miracles have been recognized by the Catholic Church over 160 years.

And tonight, you'll hear a miracle story and from the renowned doctors and researchers who investigated it. Shame I'm boning. How do we know the South Dakota kid is the greatest pool player in the world? Just go right down the middle? Yep, right down the middle. He showed us how to do this. Oh!

You got that. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley.

Those stories tonight on a special edition of 60 Minutes. I'm Jane Pauley. Listen up every Monday. Tune into our Sunday morning podcast, offering extended interviews, in-depth conversation, and inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile, because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday morning podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Last August, President Biden signed a sweeping climate bill into law, making wind power a priority, specifically offshore wind power. The goal is to capture

the force of the wind in the open seas and convert it into power for 10 million American homes by 2030. We have a long way to go. There are only seven offshore wind turbines off the coast of the United States, compared to nearly 6,000 in Europe. Critics say they're expensive to build and maintain, unpredictable and ugly. We wanted to see for ourselves. Last October, we reported from the largest offshore wind farm in the world, along the northeast coast of England, and discovered the power of Grimsby.

As you fly 200 miles north of London, along the coast, you can see the town of Grimsby below. 55 miles east of her port, you can't miss them. Elegant and a little eerie, white giants poking out of the North Sea like something out of a science fiction novel. This is the largest crop of offshore wind turbines in the world, known as the Hornsey Wind Farm. It is hypnotizing. More than 300 turbines spread across 335 square miles generate enough electricity to help power more than 2 million homes a day. To understand the power, size, and upkeep of this evolving technology, we geared up on land and traveled 90 minutes on the heaving North Sea with 24-year-old Bridie Salmon. Her job is to scale and service the turbines.

My job, with the help of a little anti-nausea gum, was to simply hold down my lunch. This is choppy out here. Yeah, it is. How are you feeling? I feel okay. It's more important how do you feel. Yeah is choppy out here. Yeah, it is. How are you feeling? I feel okay. It's more important, how do you feel? Yeah, I'm feeling good. Like I said, I like to think I've got my sea legs on.

When your last name is Salmon, negotiating rough waters is sort of in your DNA. Bridie's great-grandfather worked on the Grimsby docks. Her dad owns this 100-year-old smoked fish shop in town. Bridie was bartending when she decided to apply to an apprentice program to be a turbine technician. She was one of seven people selected from a pool of 500. Should we have a look around here then, guys?

The apprentice program combines classroom instruction. You've got a big drill bit on the bottom, and it's spinning. With hands-on work at sea. But we soon learn that mother nature is a temperamental teacher. The weather here is ever-changing. Yeah, yeah, we're holding on for our dear lives.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's the North Sea. It's not something we can control, so every day is different and it can change like that. So it's just part and parcel of the job. Anything to get these things turning. This is the environment for wind turbines. It's got to be windy. As we approached the turbines, we suddenly felt small. You don't get a sense of how large things are until you're right up under this. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, so at the very top of the nacelle, all the way to the top of the blades,

it's half the size of the Eiffel Tower, which is pretty massive. And because you've got nothing normal to compare it to, like a building, you just see these in the distance, and then you're here. And it's, yeah, they're pretty bloody huge. Translation, they're nearly 600 feet high with spinning fiberglass blades, roughly the length of the world's largest passenger jet. Each blade weighs almost 30 tons. The turbines are partially assembled on shore, then shipped out to sea, where each blade is attached with surgical precision to the top of the turbine. Every angle has to be perfect to generate maximum power.

Once installed, keeping them spinning is critical. Offshore wind engineers say one revolution can power one home in the U.K. for 24 hours. And that's where Bridie comes in. It's raining. It's windy. Can't wait. First holiday in the office. All right. In choppy waters, Captain Peter Broughton has to find the sweet spot,

maintaining constant contact between the bow and base. Some days, the winds are so high and seas so rough, the job can't be done. On this day, success. Bridie, I'll see you later. Bye. Bridie harnesses herself to a cable, leaps to a ladder, and begins the climb rung by rung eight stories to the top. Sea Wind Alliance V1 radio check. On a narrow platform hanging over the North Sea, she makes her rounds. The lights are working.

Carefully inspecting and servicing the turbine. A job not for the faint of heart. Pop this in here. What was that like the first time you made that climb? Oh, exhausting. Exhausting, yeah. Because you've got all your safety kit on as well. So you've probably got about 10 kilograms of harnesses and claws and you've got to be clipped in. So you've got that friction of climbing.

I would imagine it would be kind of scary. Yeah, really scary. I remember there was one day it was super windy. So we were up there and the top of the tower is moving. So you've got the seasickness, the motion sickness from the sea, and then the top of the tower is moving. So all day you're rocking. And it was cold and windy, and I remember coming back on shore and I was just rocking. I'm on land now, I don't need to rock, but it's pretty scary.

Benj Sykes says those kinds of extraordinary efforts are needed in extraordinary times. Sykes is the vice president of offshore wind at Orsted, a Danish-based global energy supplier that runs the Hornsey Wind Farm. You know, we have a cost of energy crisis in Europe and in Britain at the moment. That's driven by the pandemic, but also, of course, by the terrible situation in Ukraine. And all of that adds up to a real drive to find clean, cheap energy solutions. About six years ago, Orsted decided to sell off its oil and gas business and focus on renewable energies. Grimsby, a depressed fishing town, became the unlikely backdrop to Europe's clean energy movement. Why here? Why Grimsby? It's got a good port, and it's geographically really well located physically,

in terms of the water depth, in terms of the wind resource, and of course, places to connect to the national grid so that we can get that power to homes and businesses. Long before Russia's invasion of Ukraine set off the energy crisis, the UK had a strategy to use 100% clean or renewable electricity by 2035. When you talk about clean energy, you talk about solar, hydropower, biofuels. What makes offshore wind unique? Offshore wind is really the only project in most countries where you can build it at the kind of power station scale that we need. If I think about the projects we're building here in the UK, that's almost three gigawatts.

And that's, broadly speaking, the output of a nuclear power station. So we're talking large-scale infrastructure projects. Most of Europe is too populated to fit very, very large wind farms or solar farms. So that's why we've gone offshore. One big criticism is costs. They're expensive to construct, to transmit, and to decommission. Is that cost passed on to consumers? So that's simply wrong. Offshore wind power is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation

in the UK. We privately fund it together with investment partners that we bring in. Privately you fund that? Yeah. There's no public exposure to the costs of building offshore wind. And I think the thing that's made the most difference is the fact that we've had political consensus now for more than a decade. And that's given investors confidence to step in and put the big money on the table to get these projects away. Gas and nuclear still make up a majority of the power supply

flowing into UK homes and businesses. But this year, 14% of Britain's energy has come from offshore wind. Only China produces more offshore wind power than the UK. Here's how it works. Wind turns the blades around a shaft inside the turbine, which spins a generator. Energy then travels down, going 300 feet beneath the water surface to cables buried under the seabed, connecting to an offshore substation, then to a power station on land, where that electricity created out at sea is transferred into homes and businesses, inviting the question, what happens if the wind stops blowing?

Using satellites and other technology, we can predict extremely accurately how much we're going to generate over the next days, which enables those who operate the grid to make very clear plans about where's demand going, where's supply going. I mean, if I look at the turbines that we've got out in Hornsey, they're operating 98, 99% of the time. This is Grimsby's second act. Through the 1950s to 1970, the town hosted the largest fishing fleet in the world,

with 700 trawlers, a wash and cash, and a port fit for a visit from the Queen. Oh, it was absolutely brilliant. The camaraderie, because you can say nearly 100% of the population would be associated with the fishing industry in some way. Dennis Avery and Bob Thornby were part of the town's fishing tradition. What was it like? No, it's a tough job.

It's work from sailing till you get back in the port again. Working in the winter around Iceland and them places was pretty severe, but it's the kind of job that I would do again tomorrow. In those days, you had two choices. You worked on the docks or you went to sea. Decker Navigator. Avery captained this hulking steel fishing trawler, the Ross Tiger, for eight years. If you caught a good trip and you're steaming home back to Grimsby with a fish room full of fish, you know, it's a marvelous feeling. That marvelous feeling ended when Iceland, Britain's neighbor to the north, began enforcing fishing restrictions in their cod-rich waters. Fish to Grimsby may shrink to a trickle.

What did you see happen in town when that happened? Gosh, it was a disaster, to be quite honest, because everybody was involved some way in fishing. Like taxi drivers, the pubs, the dress shops and places like that. They all suffered. You know, once the fishing sort of went, it all sort of died a death. Wind power has breathed new life into Grimsby. Offshore energy company Orsted says it's created 600 jobs here

and invested over $18 billion in local wind farms. But there are plenty of people who worry the environmental impact of the wind turbines hasn't been sufficiently studied. And others say the industry has not created the number of jobs they've promised. But the concern of these retired fishermen is more practical. We're not seeing benefits. Your electricity bill hasn't gone down? No, no, it's gone up, if anything.

When they said about them, are we going to get cheap electricity and it's going to be, you know, green and everything? But I can't see any benefits, to be quite honest. But has your electricity bill gone down? Try double. It's doubled. There are people who said, yeah, we've got all these turbines, but our electricity bill

hasn't gone down a cent. Yeah, I mean, it is a real challenge that. It's going to take time because we need to build more offshore wind. So you think if there's more offshore wind, prices could go down? Yeah, absolutely. Fearing the war in Ukraine could lead to blackouts last winter, the UK government announced more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. They will also speed up the time it takes for new offshore wind projects to get online.

Ben Sykes told us that over the next eight years, Orsed plans to invest another $17 billion in wind farms and add more than 300 jobs in Grimsby. You know, the fishing industry was fantastic for Grimsby. That era has passed. What we want to do is to be part of creating the next chapter of Grimsby's life and of the country's life as we build out. A chapter Bridie Salmon is very much a part of. So that's gone from Grimsby being the fishing town

to the powerhouse of the north, which is an amazing transition. Proud of it? So proud of it. And to be a part of it So that's gone from Grimsby being the fishing town to the powerhouse of the north which is an amazing transition. Proud of it? So proud of it and to be a part of it is amazing. A town's future and fortune once again tied to the sea. What it takes to film offshore wind turbines. You have to do a course where you get flipped upside down and submerged in water. At 60minutesovertime.com. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast

chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. After a gruesome pandemic and decades of increasing political partisanship, you'd be forgiven for giving up on the idea of miracles. But tonight, we'll take you to a place that's known for them.

As we first reported in December, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France is the site of 70 medical miracles recognized by the Catholic Church. The Marian Shrine is famous to the faithful, but less well-known is the Lord's Office of Medical Observations. That's where world-renowned doctors and researchers conduct decade-long investigations into the countless claims of cures reported over the years. They determine which cases can be medically explained and which cannot. It's those church officials might call a miracle. For the doctors,

it's a lesson in the limits of medicine. For the devout, it's divine intervention. The small French town of Lourdes, tucked in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, draws more than three million pilgrims every year, more than travel to Mecca or Jerusalem. And almost everyone you meet will tell you they've heard stories of miracles here. But we heard none more inspiring than that of Sister Bernadette Moriot. I really tried everything I could, but this is something that cannot be healed. What was your prognosis?

Full, total paralysis. The prognosis was really dark. Strolling with 83-year-old Sister Moriot through the chapel grounds in Brel, France, we found it hard to believe that for half her life she suffered from cauda equina, a disorder of the nerves and lower spine. You wore this all the time.

Her left foot, she said, was twisted and limp. To walk at all, she needed this back and leg brace, an implant to dull nerve pain, and massive doses of morphine. She told us she had exhausted all treatment options. So in 2008, her doctor convinced her to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Did you believe in miracles at the time? I always believed in miracles, but not for me. So why did you decide to go?

Well, I didn't go there for a miracle. I just went there to pray with others. Lourdes is a place where the smallest people, all the sickest, all the poorest, they come first. The sickest, the poorest, the diseased and debilitated, bearing wounds visible and hidden, come from all over the world seeking to be healed by the shrine's natural spring waters and the power of prayer. And so I've asked for complete healing or a super long remission. This was Kim Halpin's first pilgrimage.

She found out two years ago she has incurable blood cancer and came all the way from Kansas to cleanse herself in the waters of Lourdes. Are you expecting to be healed? Not necessarily. Ask for as much as I want, and maybe I will be blessed with part of it, which will be okay. Halpin was aided by her son, Sean. We couldn't help but notice there are as many volunteers as sick here. The Our Lady of Lords Hospitality North American Volunteers helped Jamie Jensen travel from Minnesota for his 18th visit.

Even though the camera sees that I have a condition and a chair, when I'm here, I don't have a condition. Jensen's condition is cerebral palsy. All those trips to Lourdes haven't given him the physical miracle he wanted, but maybe, he says, he got the miracle he needed. I was very bitter, very angry with myself. Did coming to Lourdes change your heart? Very much. Do you consider that a miracle?

I do, because there's a peace within myself. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Stories of inner peace and acceptance don't meet the bar for the Office of Medical Observations, and with just 70 medical miracles recognized in 160 years, you'd have better odds playing the lotto. Yet thousands of faithful line up at the baths and at this grotto where the first miracle is said to have occurred. The sanctuary, with its three basilicas and 25 chapels, is laid out like a grand theater complex, its many stages offering dozens of pious performances throughout the day. The finale, a candlelit procession every night. There would be none of this were it not for Saint Bernadette.

According to Catholic lore, in 1858, a mysterious woman appeared in this grotto to Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl. Jean-Marc Bica, the Bishop of Lourdes, says the woman spoke with Soubirous several times over five months. And once, the 25th of March, day of the Annunciation, she said, I am the Immaculate Conception. When word got out the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Mary, had appeared in Lourdes, people flocked to this grotto and within days started making claims of miracle cures, the ability to walk, restored sight. Worried about fueling mass hysteria, the church set up the Office of Medical Observations in 1883 to investigate the claims. Which brings us back to the other Bernadette in our story.

Fifteen years ago, Sister Moriot found herself in a wheelchair in a procession at Lourdes, seeking the intervention of Saint Bernadette. And I really had that feeling that the Lord was walking with us. And I heard him that feeling that the Lord was walking with us. And I heard him giving me these words, I see your suffering and that of your sick brothers and sisters. Just give me everything. You heard the voice of Jesus. Yes, I heard this in a voice. I can't really tell you whose voice it was. It was like a spiritual experience. She said she returned home rejuvenated spiritually, but physically she felt worse. After three days in excruciating pain, she told us she suddenly

found the strength to walk to the chapel and pray. Then I felt some kind of heat coming into my body. I felt relaxed, but I didn't really know what that was meaning. And in my room, I heard this inner voice again telling me, take all your braces off. I didn't think twice, and I started taking my foot brace off. And my foot, that used to be crooked, was straight, and I could actually put it on the ground without feeling any pain. All of a sudden, your foot was straight. Yes, like that. Like the way it is just now.

And so I kept going. She says she took off the braces and stopped the morphine all at once. Did this make sense to you? No, I knew it was impossible. She came to my door with her doctor and she said, last year I came to Lourdes on pilgrimage and three days after I got back home, I was cured. Dr. Alessandro DeFrancicis hears stories like that all the time. As the president and residing physician at the Lord's Office of Medical Observations, the former pediatrician's job is to determine whether there is more to those stories by applying seven strict criteria established by the church.

And we're looking for a diagnosis. And if that diagnosis is a diagnosis of a severe disease with a severe prognosis, and then we want to make sure that that person is a person that was cured in a way that one would say suddenly, in an instantaneous way, in a complete way, and in a way lasting in time. And my seventh criteria that has to match is there must be no possible explanation to that cure.

Sister Bernadette Morio. He showed us the archives, which hold thousands of recorded claims of cures. This feels like it's almost 10 pounds. Dr. DeFrancicis, a practicing Catholic, told us what separates the more than 7,000 claims of cures from the 70 the church calls miracles is an ungodly amount of medical documentation and patients like Sister Moriot willing to put their lives under a microscope. We sent her to two different neurologists. We sent her to different

rheumatologists because of the different specific case of her disease. We asked to repeat twice all sorts of imagery, electrophysiology. We did all were doing medicine to be absolutely sure of her diagnosis and it was. But he wanted to confirm something else. I was asked to meet with two psychiatrists in Paris. They wanted to know if I was lying, if I had already had any hallucinations, if I had levitated.

I remember answering, no doctor, I never left the ground floor. Satisfied, Dr. De Franchisi sent Sister Morio's case to a group of 33 doctors and professors called the International Medical Committee of Lords. Its job is to determine whether a cure is what they consider medically unexplained. We're not trying to reel something in or reel something out. We're just trying to be objective. You could call them the devil's advocates. Dr. Michael Moran, a surgical oncologist. Dr. Jacek Mostwin, a professor of urology at Johns Hopkins. and Dr. Kieran Moriarty, a renowned addiction specialist, scrutinized Sister Moriot's case.

Is there anything that could have caused her response? No treatment would be that effective that quickly. Does religion enter into your medical conversation? We cannot separate ourselves as people who have been deeply immersed in the culture and the traditions of Lourdes and the Church. But make no mistake, we're just as technical as a forensic pathologist when it comes to looking at the technical details of the case. After eight years of investigation,

the committee determined that Sister Moriot's case was medically unexplained. So when you do a survey, the investigation of Sister Bernadette's or any of the other cures, this is done on a purely medical basis, something that could be peer-reviewed by other physicians outside of... Not could, that is. They are peer-reviewed. I have estimated, I can affirm with absolute certainty that the case of Sister Bernadette had been reviewed, read,

expertised by at least 300 physicians. 300 physicians. And if tomorrow morning any of our viewers is a doctor, and one day he stops in southern France and comes to see me, and wants to look into the file of Sister Bernadette, I'll be delighted to show him, because we have, everything is open and collegial and no secrets. The secret is the mystery of it all.

And on that, the church gets the last word. In 2018, a decade after her cure, Sister Morio's case was declared the 70th miracle of lords. Declaring a miracle is saying God did something. This is the miracle. And the doctors cannot go on that land, on that field. When I told people I was coming here, I got a lot of people who told me, oh, come on, there's got to be some explanation

that we just don't know. What do you say to the skeptics? Come and see. Be open. Don't be narrow-minded. Be open to believe that the real world is wider than the visible one. It's been said about Lords, for those who believe no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation is possible.

You'd expect a 600-year-old sport to have played through its identity crisis. Not the case for pool. The sport's very name comes from pooling money to determine odds, and wagering lends pool mystique. Hustling and pool go together like a cue stick and chalk. But that's as much a curse as a blessing. How can a sport thrive at the highest level when so much of it exists in the shadows? Well, here comes Shane Van Boning from Rapid City.

As we first told you in December, at age 39 with no interest in gambling, Van Boning is arguably the best American player ever to break a rack, and was ranked number one in the world for 2022. He also happens to be deaf. Can the South Dakota kid help turn pool, popular in bars and basements but not on TV, into a proper pro sport? We hit the circuit with him to find out. Another day, another casino hotel. Shane Van Boning spends 300 days a year on the road playing professional pool. Today, he's clocking in early at the jamboree of American pool tournaments,

the Derby City Classic. Held every January outside Louisville, Derby City is a colorful expression of pool split personality. Downstairs, a felt ocean drawing dozens of the world's best practitioners. They compete 12 hours a day for nine days in multiple events. This winner is smiling ear to ear, and his check tops out at $16,000. But upstairs, it's a different economy.

Behold Poole's zestier side. Pop-up action rooms, standing room only, where pros, amateurs, and wannabes alike come to the table for unofficial competition. The signs say no smoking and no gambling, and we sure didn't see any smoking. Tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, big timber they call it, change hands until the sun comes up. One player we didn't see gambling upstairs, Shane Van Boning, a generational talent known

for his killer break. Van Boning has won the U.S. Open five times and been named Player of the Decade. Deaf since birth, he wears hearing aids and shuts down any question that makes it harder for him to play pool. It's actually a big advantage for me. How's that? You know, when I play pool tournament, I can just shut it off.

Do you shut your hearing aids off when you play? When I won my first US Open, I had everything off. I was focused. Total silence? Yes. I'm totally, like, 100% zoned in. Never more zoned in than in 2018, when he led the United States to victory over Europe at the Moscone Cup, Poole's answer to golf's Ryder Cup. And he is going for it.

He closed it out with an off-angle, long-distance 1-9 combo, this high-risk, high-reward, pressure-packed shot. What a shot! Shane Van Boning and Team USA! Unbelievable finish! Think you could have made that shot? We went to Rapid City, South Dakota, a side pocket of America, to Van Boning's pool hall, where he explained that making balls disappear into pockets

is only half of pool excellence. It's also about setting up your neck shots. Cue ball control, they call it. And I'm going to make the cue ball stop right here so I can shoot the two on the side. Then I'm going to... You did that how? How did you do that?

Just hit it right below center. So now it lines up that next ball perfectly. Yeah. I'm so struck by the geometry of all this. Yeah, I love geometry. It's all about the angles. Van Boning says he can see every angle on the table, a sixth sense that comes from practicing as much as 10 hours a day, shooting half a million balls a year.

I want to make the shot perfect. The only way to hit it perfect, you got to do it over and over and over. Can you be perfect in this sport? No. I tried so hard all these years. Van Boning comes by it honestly. His grandfather, Gary Bloomberg, a known trick shot artist, opened pool halls off I-90. Easy access for hustlers passing across the Great Plains.

But these rooms were family-friendly places. So much so, Shane got his first pool cue when he was two and went to the pool room every day after school, not just to play, but to escape kids who picked on him for being deaf. How bad did it get? The kids would start throwing rocks at me. They would put gum in my hair.

And then I would go home to my mom and i'd be going home crying you know and then she made me feel better by asking me do you want to go to the pool why did coming to the pool room make you feel better you know when you walk in the pool and what do you see you know you see people having a good time but it it was more than that. He had prodigious ability for thinking multiple strokes ahead. When Van Boning was 18, he hit the road. He and his uncle loaded into an RV looking for money games. Came to play fool's bats. Of course they did. The hustler, that stealth roadman armed only with a wooden stick and confidence, divorcing the locals from their cash, has been romanticized for decades,

not least by Paul Newman. This reporter was so taken by pool hustling, he once wrote a book about it. For Van Boning, the romance hit the rocks abruptly. Yeah, I actually was playing in a pool in Tennessee, and I was playing this guy for money, and we were playing for a whole lot, and he was losing, and he picked up the key ball and threw it at me.

Where did he hit you? He hit me right on the chest. That's the kind of thing you do to start a fight. Yeah. How'd you react? I told my uncle, I said, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to live on the road anymore. It's just too dangerous.

Here we go for the title. He chose to go legit and began playing and winning proper tournaments. Though less lucrative than the rambling gambling life, Van Boning enjoyed being a professional. Did you worry that coming in off the road was going to impact your finances? I know some of the pool players, like the top pool players, were making money, so if they can do it, I can do it. But pool is a deceptively tricky sport. Next up, two superpowers collide. Just ask Shane's Scottish counterpart, Jason Shaw, another top player.

Earlier this year, Shaw holed up in a Virginia pool room for five days and broke the straight pool record, making 714 shots in a row. The stuff that happens in pool will completely screw your brain up. What do you mean? You'll see shots and you'll be like, how did that happen? You'll hear that all day. How did that land over there? Did you see that, how that went in? In pool, you see it every game, something weird will happen. Does that make it more exhilarating or more frustrating?

Both. Mentally, you want to like flip the table at some point. You ever flip the table? No, I've thought about it a few times. People come in, they're like, how hard could it be? It's just a rectangle with six pockets. Yeah, and then 20 minutes later,

there's still 15 balls on the table. They've not potted a ball, and the guy's, like, stretching his head like, I thought this was easy. It's not. We watched you at Derby City play Jason Shaw. Jason who? his head like, I thought this was easy. It's not. We watched you at Derby City play Jason Shaw. Jason who?

Yeah. Is he a rival? Yeah, it's been going on for several years now. He's a great player. And we're always going to have a battle. You okay with that? Yeah. You have to accept losing. If you don't accept losing, you're just, you're gonna go crazy. How thick is this ice right here? If having a rival is central to being an elite athlete, so is this. Leaving time to clear your head.

So it was, we found ourselves following Shane Van Boning out onto Pactola Lake in the Black Hills. Van Boning goes fishing, seasoned be damned, every morning when he's back home. We didn't catch any fish. We did catch Van Boning's drift, though, his take on the virtues of complete silence. Vanity plate notwithstanding, few extravagances come with being number one in pool.

The ragtag pro tour, barely televised in the U.S., struggles to draw much interest, or investment, outside of pool diehards. How many sponsors do you have? I have six sponsors. Cues and tables and pool products? Yes. And any sponsors outside of pool? No. What can a top player make?

A top player in pool can make only six figures. After expenses, maybe five figures. No one's making a million bucks as a pool player. No, it's never happened. Van Boning says cleaning up the sport, doing away with backroom money games, would lure big corporate sponsors, big media deals, and grow professional pool. We saw firsthand his discomfort with gambling and all that comes with it. When we interviewed you in Derby City, I don't know if you remember, the interview was interrupted.

Do you recall what happened? Oh, the gambling? Was that what happened? Yeah. It was morning at Derby City, and the action upstairs from the night before was still simmering. Are they arguing? Over the course of a few minutes, two players who'd bet on a game nearly came to blows. I cannot gamble, you know.

Van Boning could only shake his head. It's got to be a clean sport. Enter Pro Pool's unlikely new guardian, Emily Fraser, of the British sports promoter Matchroom. The company recently revamped pro darts and snooker in the UK, streamlining their circuits and turning top players into celebrities who make millions. That's where the trophy sits. Fraser is tasked with doing the same for pool, and she says gambling is the least of her worries. What's the state of professional pool today?

An absolute mess. Why do you say that? The first ever U.S. Open that I did in 2019. Oh my gosh, the players turned up. They were in jeans. And I'm going, hang on a second, what's happening here? Why is this guy turning up in jeans? Fraser has asked pro players to dress the part, but she won't ask them to give up their

side hustles. Now, all of the basement tables and the money matches, I think that's brilliant. And that can still… You do? Yeah, I think that it's fantastic because it's got the history behind it. You're okay if people are still gambling and playing money games? As far as I'm concerned, in a couple years' time, they won't need to have any money matches. It'll be obsolete. The market will do its thing.

Exactly. But right now, it's not viewed as this professional sport. And it has all the ingredients to be one. She's standardized the format. This is commercialized, sponsor-friendly nine ball, not the solids and stripes eight ball you've likely played. In October at the U.S. Open held in Atlantic City, Frazier brought in bigger live audiences and ramped up TV production. She's kept one pool hallmark, the smoke-filled room. Close, but no cigar. There's a machine puffing away in the corner. When the smoke cleared, there was Shane Van Boning. He was fresh off winning his first world championship, sealing his status atop the sport. He confided to us that he'd slept with the

trophy for a month. Van Boning is mobbed at pool tournaments, but can still walk through an airport unbothered. Well, he's no LeBron James, and I totally understand that, and I recognize that. It's our job to turn that around. It is our responsibility to turn that world number one prize money from $80,000 to a million. So it's prize money. It's more events. And let's get these players known. You've got to fall in love with them. Are they lovable?

Yeah, some of them. The health of the sport also depends on minting a new generation of elite players. So this tournament had a junior division held alongside the pros and named, what else, the Shane Van Boning Jr. Open. These are future pros? Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. They have so much passion for the game. And then I'm gonna shoot the shish. Back at the pool hall in Rapid City, we experience pool's highs and lows

in the same hour. You didn't even let me hit a ball. Ever the sports gentleman, Shane Van Boning wouldn't let us leave without setting us up to sink a trick shot. Pool may or may not clean up its act, but any sport that can provide this kind of pure, simple thrill... Just go right down the middle? Yep, right down the middle. You reckon it'll survive just fine. You got that. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. We'll be back Sunday with another edition of 60 Minutes. inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday morning podcast

on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.