tv 60 Minutes CBS July 26, 2023 8:00pm-9:01pm PDT
8:01 pm
this is the largest crop of offshore wind turbines in the world, and 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 lords 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.
8:02 pm
how do we know the south dakota kid is the greatest pool player in the world? >> go right down the middle? >> yup, right down the middle. >> he showed us how to do this. >> oh. you got that. i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm scecilia vega. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on a special edition of "60 minutute" l that givives you a m mop and bucketet clean in half ththe time. our r new cleanining pad has hundrereds of scrurubbing stri- ththat absorbb and lolock dirt awaway, ( ♪♪ ) and it h has a 360-d-degree swivel heaead- ththat goes plplaces a a regular momop just canan. so, , you can clclean your h e fafaster than n ever.
8:03 pm
don'n't mop hardrder, mop smsm, withth the new s swiffer powow. [bonones crackining] ♪ (tensnse music) ♪ one e aleve workrks all dayy so i canan keep workrking mymy magic. just one a aleve. 12 hours of uninteterrupted pain relelief. alaleve. whwho do you t take it for?? hey, it's me...your skin. someme cleansersrs get us clcn - bubut take my y moisture.. ceraveve cleansersrs help me maintainin my moistuture balae withth hyaluroninic acid, plus 3 e essential c ceramids to h help restorore my n natural bararrier. so we're c cerave cleaean. cerave hydydrating cleleanse.
8:05 pm
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
8:06 pm
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, you can see the town of grimsby below. >> we're on our way to the wind park. >> 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 hornsy wind farm. it is hypnotizing. more than 300 turbines spread across 335 square miles generate
8:07 pm
enough electricity to help power more than 2 million homes a day. >> beautiful day. >> yeah, beautiful 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 bridy salmon, her job is to scale and service the turbines, my job with a little anti-nausea gum was to hold down my lunch. >> how you feeling? >> i feel okay. it's more important, how do you feel? >> i'm feeling good. 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. bridy's great-grandfather worked on the grimsby docks, her dad owns this smoked fish shop in town. bridy was bar tending when she decided to apply to an apprentice program to be a
8:08 pm
turbine technician. she was one of seven people selected from a pool of 500. the apprentice program combines classroom instruction. >> on the bottom and it's spinning. >> with hands-on work at sea. but we soon learned that mother nature is a temperamental teacher. >> the weather here is ever-changing. >> holding on for our dear lives. >> yeah. >> yeah, i mean, 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, and anything to get these things turning, this is the environment for wind turbines, it's got to be windy. >> reporter: as we approach the turbines we suddenly felt small. you don't get a sense of how large things are until you're right up under this. >> at the very top in the cell, all the way to the top of the blades there's half a size of the eiffel tower, pretty massive. because you've got nothing normal to compare it to like a
8:09 pm
building, you see these in the distance, and you're here and they're pretty bloody huge. >> reporter: translation, they're nearly 600 feet high with spinning fiberglass blaids roughly the length of the world's largest passenger jet. each blade weighs almost 30 tons. the turbines are partialy assembled on shore, and shipped to sea. where each is attached 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 uk for 24 hours and that's where bridy comes in. it's raining, it's windy. >> yup, can't wait. just another day at the office. >> all right. >> reporter: in choppy waters the captain has to find the sweet spot, maintaining constant contact between the bow and
8:10 pm
base. >> traffic seems quiet. >> reporter: some days the winds are so high and seas so rough the job can't be done. on this day, success. >> see you later, bye. >> okay, be careful. >> reporter: bridy harnesses herself to a cable. >> happy? >> yeah, you? >> yeah. >> reporter: leaps to a ladder. and begins the climb rung by rung eight stories to the top. >> radio check. >> reporter: on a narrow platform hanging over the north sea she makes her rounds. >> the lights are working. >> reporter: carefully inspecting and servicing the turbine, a job not for the faint of heart. >> what was that like the first time you made the climb? >> exhausting. you've got your safety kit on as well, 10 kilograms of harnesses and claws, and clipped in and friction of climbing.
8:11 pm
>> i imagine it can be scary. >> very scary. there was one day it was super windy, we were up there and the top of the tower is moving. you've got the seasickness, the motion sickness from the sea and then the top of the tower is moving. 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 yeah, it's pretty scary. >> reporter: benj psychs says those kinds of extraordinary efforts are needed in extraordinary times. sykes is the vice president of offshore wind at a danish-based global supplier that winds the wind farm. >> we have a cost of energy crisis in europe and in britain at the moment, 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. >> reporter: about six years ago orstead decided to sell off its oil and gas business and focus
8:12 pm
on renewable energies, grimsby a depressed fishing town became the unlikely backdrop to europe's clean energy movement. why here? >> 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. >> reporter: 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, solar, hydropower, bio fuels, what makes off-cshore wi unique. >> it's 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, the output of a nuclear power
8:13 pm
station. we're talking large scale infrastructure projects, most of europe is too populated to fit very, very large wind farms or solar farms, that's why we're gone offshore. >> reporter: one big criticism is cost, expensive to construct, transmit, and to decommission. is that cost passed on to consumers? >> that's simply wrong. offshore wind power is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the uk. we've privately funded, together with investment partners we bring in. >> reporter: privately you fund that? >> yeah, there's no public exposure to the cost of building offshore wind. the thing that's made the most difference is the fact 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. >> reporter: 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.
8:14 pm
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 in hornsy, they're operating 98%, 99% of the time.
8:15 pm
>> reporter: this is grimsby's second act, through the 1950s to 1970 the town hosted the largest fishing fleet in the world with 700 trawlers, awash in cash, and a port fit for a visit from the queen. >> oh, it was absolutely brilliant. the calm maraderie, nearly 100% the population would be associated with the fishing industry in some way. >> reporter: dennis avery and bob foreignby were part of the twn's tradition. what was it like? >> tough job. swift from sailing, back in the ports again, working in the winter around iceland and them places was pretty severe. but it was the kind of job i would do again tomorrow. >> in those days two choices, you worked on the docks or you went to sea. >> reporter: avery captained this hulking steel fishing trawler, the ross tiger, for eight years. >> if you caught a good trip, and you steam it home back to
8:16 pm
grimsby with a fish room full of fish it's a marvelous feeling. >> reporter: that marvelous feeling ended when iceland, britain's neighbor to the north, began enforcing fishing restrictions in their cod-rich waters. >> fish may shrink to a trickle. >> reporter: 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. >> once the fishing sort of went, it all sort of died a death. >> reporter: wind power has breathed new life into grimsby, offshore energy company orstead says it's created 600 jobs here and invested over $18 billion in local wind farms. burr 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 create the
8:17 pm
number of jobs they've promised. but the concern of these retired fishermen is more practical. >> we're not seeing benefits. >> reporter: your electricity bill hasn't gone down? >> no, it's gone up if anything. they said we're going to get cheap electricity and green and everything but i can't see any benefits to be quite honest. >> reporter: has your electricity bill gone down? >> try double. it's doubled. >> reporter: there are people who said we've got all these turbines but our electrcity 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. >> reporter: you think if there's more offshore wind prices could go down? >> yeah, absolutely. >> reporter: 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.
8:18 pm
ben sykes told us that over the next eight years orstead plans to invest another $17 billion in wind farms and add more than 300 jobs in grimsby. >> the fishing industry was fantastic for grimsby, that era has passed, what we want to do is be part of creating the next chapter of grimsby's life, as we build out. >> reporter: a chapter bridy salmon is very much a part of. >> grimsby went from a fishing town to power house of the north. >> proud of it. >> so proud of it and to be a part of it is amazing. >> reporter: 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. >> repeporter: at t "60 minunut
8:19 pm
overtime" " dotcom. so t today let's's stain, with b behr, ththe #1 rateded stain. and makeke your deckck, you. behr. exclusivively at thehe home d. (s(smelling) ewew. gotta a get rid ofof this. ♪tell me whwhy♪ becacause it stitinks. ♪have y you tried downy rinsnse and refrfresh♪ it helpsps remove ododors 3x3x better ththan dedetergent alalone. it w worked guysys! ♪yeahhhhh♪ dodowny rinse e and refrese. we a always had d questions. who o do we belolong to? who arare our ancecestors? i knknow we haveve them. oh my gogod, here itit is. when i f found that t immigran record on n ancestry®®, it was amamazing. everytything was t there. the e u.s. was i in dire need of nurses s during wororld wa. tía a amalia as s a nurse in e el salvadoror decided d to answer r that . it's a l lot of excicitement findining somethining new. i feel likike a time t trav. clauaudia startsts calling m. it's a pararty every t time. ♪ crack the science of stronger hair.
8:20 pm
fructis. with keratin. protein or biotin in reloaded systems. up to 72 hours frizz control. 48 hours definition. or 72 hours thicker looking hair. fructis. by garnier, naturally. becky, you're constantly leaving your mark with youour number-o-one hit ss and with the work you do in your community. wewe're e excited to o offeru ththe first-evever fingertrp sponsorshihip deal. espepera... justst my fingerer? justst your fingngertips. cheeeetos wants s to sponsor mymy fingertipips? exexactly. ok!! [s[sfx: celebrbrating] dodo you mindd ifif i get a p picture? sure! justst the fingegers. is that t good? um..... a littlele lower. how w about now?w?
8:22 pm
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 lords 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 lords 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
8:23 pm
intervention. the small french town of lords tucked in the foothills of the pyrenees mountains draws more than 3 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 morio. >> translator: i really tried everything i could but this is something that cannot be healed. >> reporter: what was your prognosis? >> translator: total paralysis. the prognosis was really dark. >> reporter: strolling with this 83-year-old through the chapel grounds in bell, france, we found it hard to believe that for half her life she suffered from a disorder of the nerves and lower spine. you wore this all the time?
8:24 pm
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 lords. did you believe in miracles at the time? >> translator: i always believed in miracles, but not for it seems to me. >> reporter: why did you decide to go? >> translator: i didn't go there for a miracle. i just went there for others. it's the place where the smallest people, sickest and poorest, they come first. >> reporter: 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
8:25 pm
prayer. >> and so i've asked for complete healing, or super long remission. >> reporter: 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 lords. 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. >> reporter: 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 i have a condition and a chair,
8:26 pm
when i'm here i don't have a condition. >> reporter: jensen's condition is say veeb ral pall say. all those trips to lords haven't given him the miracle he wanted but maybe, he says, he got the miracle he needed. >> i was very bitter, very angry with myself. >> reporter: did coming to lords change your heart? >> very much. >> reporter: do you consider that a miracle? >> i do because there's a peace within myself. >> reporter: 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 thi
8:27 pm
thisgrotto where the first miracle is said to have occurred. the sanctuary is laid out like a grand theater complex. it's many stages offerig dozens of pious performances throughout the day. the finale, a candle-lit procession every night. there would be none of this were it not for st. bernadette according to catholic lore in 1858 a mysterious woman appeared in this grotto to bernadette -- a 14-year-old peasant girl. jean mark bika the bishop said the woman spoke with her several times over five months. >> and once the 25th of march, day of the enunciation, she said
8:28 pm
i am the immaculate conception. >> when word got out the immaculate conception the virgin mary had appeared in lords 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 observations in 1883 to investigate the claims, which brings us back to the other bernadette in our story. 15 years ago sister morio found herself in a wheelchair in a procession at lords seeking the intervention of st. bernadette. >> i really had 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. >> reporter: you heard the voice of jesus? >> translator: yes, i heard this in a voice.
8:29 pm
i can't really tell you whose voice it was. it was like a spiritual experience. >> reporter: 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. >> translator: 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 in a 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. >> reporter: all the sudden your foot was straight? >> translator: yes, like that, like it is just now, and so i kept going. >> reporter: she says she took off the braces and stopped the morphine all at once. >> reporter: did this make sense to you?
8:30 pm
>> translator: no. i knew it was impossible. >> she came to my door with her doctor and she said last year i came to lords on pilgrimage and three days after i got back home i was cured. >> reporter: this doctor hears stories like this all the time. as the president and residing physician at the lords 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. we're looking for a diagnosis. and if that diagnosis is a diagnosis of a severe disease with a severe prognosis, 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
8:31 pm
cure. >> sister bernadette -- >> reporter: he showed us the archives which hold thousands of recorded claims of cures. >> feels like it's almost ten pounds. >> ten pounds. >> reporter: this doctor, 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 morio willing to put their lives under a microscope. >> we sent to different neurologists and different rheumatologists because of the specific case of her disease, we asked to repeat twice all sorts of imagery, electrophysiology, did all we would do in medicine to make sure of her diagnosis. it was. >> reporter: he wanted to confirm something else. >> translator: i was asked to meet with two psychiatrists in paris. they wanted to know if i was
8:32 pm
lying. if i had already had any hallucinations. if i had levitated. i remember answering no, doctor, i never left the ground floor. >> reporter: satisfied the doctor 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 rule something out, we're just trying to be objective. >> reporter: you could call them the devil's advocates, a surgical oncologist, a professor of urology at johns hopkins, and a renowned addiction specialist scrutinized sister morio's cases. is there anything that could have caused her response?
8:33 pm
>> no treatment would be that effective that quickly. >> reporter: 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 lords and the church. but make no mistake, we're just az as technical as a forensic pathologist. >> reporter: after eight years the committee determined that sister morio's case was medically unexplained. when you do a survey, the investigation of sister bernadette's or any other cures this is done on a purely medical basis, something that could be peer reviewed by other physicians outside -- >> not could, that is. >> reporter: are peer reviewed. >> i can affirm with absolute certainty that the case of sister bernadette have been reviewed, read, expertized by at
8:34 pm
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, no secrets. >> reporter: the secret is the myselfry of it all. 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. >> reporter: when i told people i was coming here i got a lot of people who told me, there's got to be some explanation we don't
8:35 pm
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. >> reporter: it's been said about lords for those who believe no explanation is necessary. for those who do not, no explanation is possible. we u used to strtruggle with grgreasy messeses. nonow, we justst freak, wiwiped we''re donone! withth mr. cleanan clean fre, conqnquering mesesses is tt easy. clean freaeak's mimist is the times s more powererful,
8:36 pm
and it w works on cocontac. clean freaeak, just frfreak, wipepe, done. (w(wheezing) asthma i isn't prpretty. it's s the momentnt when yoyou realize e that a gooood d. isis about to o become a b bad. but then, , i rememberered thatat the worldld isis so much b bigger thanan , with trelelegy. because e one dose a a day helps kekeep my asththma sympts undeder control.l. anand with 3 m medicines in 1 inhnhaler, trelelegy helps s improve lung fununction so i canan breathe e easier for a fullll 24 hours.s. trelegy y won't rereplace a rescueue inhaler for susudden breatathing probl. trtrelegy contntains a mededie that incncreases risisk of hospitatalizations s and deh from aststhma problelems whwhen used alalone. whwhen this memedicine is s d wiwith an inhahaled corticicos, lilike in trelelegy, therere it a signgnificant inincreased rk ofof these evevents. do not takake trelegyy more t than prescrcribed. trelelegy may inincrease risk ofof thrush anand infectioio. get emerergency carere for serious alallergic reaeaction. see yourur doctor ifif your asa dodoes not impmprove or gegets. ♪ what a wowonderful woworld♪ ask yourur doctor ababout oncece-daily trerelegy for a as-
8:39 pm
(warehouse ambience) introducucing togo's's nenew french d dip sandwicics featuring fresh arartisan breae piled d high with h tender roasast beef, smsmothered wiwith melty provolone e cheese anand served w with hot auau for dipppping. try the roroast beef o or pastri french dipips today only a at togo's 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
8:40 pm
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? here comes shane van boening from rapid city. as we first told you in december at age 39 with no interest in gambling van boening 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 boening 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's
8:41 pm
split personality, down stairs a felt ocean drawing dozens of the worlds 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 pool'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. we sure didn't see any smoking, tense, 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 boening, a generational talent known for his killer break, van boening has won the u.s. open five times and been named player of the decade. deaf since birth he wears
8:42 pm
hearing aids and shuts down any question this makes it harder for him to play pool. >> it's actually a bigger advantage for he. >> how is that? >> when i play a pool tournament i can just shut it a off. >> do you shut your hearing aids off when you play? >> when i won my first u.s. open,, everyrything ofoff. > total sisilence. >> yeyes, i'm totally, 100% zon in. . >> reporteter: never more zonedn than in 2018 when he led the united states to victory over europe at the musconi cup, pool's answer to golf's rider cup. >> he is going for it. >> r reporter: he clososed it o with an off angle long distance combo, with a high risk, high reward preressure packed d shot >> what a shshot, shanene van boenining and teamm usa, unbelievable finish. >> reporter: think you could have made that shot? we went to rapid city, south dakota, a side pocket of america to van boening's pool hall where he explained that making balls disappear into pockets is only
8:43 pm
half of pool excellence. it's also about setting up your next shots, cue ball control, they call it. >> i'm going to make the cue ball stop right here so i can shoot the 2 on the side. then i'm going to -- >> you did that how? how did you do that? >> just hit it right below 7 center. >> 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. >> reporter: van boening says he can see every angle on the table, a sixth sense that comes from practicing as much as ten hours a day, shooting half a million balls a year. >> i want to make the shot perfect, the only way to hit it perfectly, do it over and over and over. >> reporter: can you be perfect in the sport? >> no. i try so hard, all these years. >> reporter: van boening comes by it honestly, his grandfather gary bloomberg, a known trick
8:44 pm
shot artist opened pool halls off i-90 easy access for hustlers, these rooms were family friendly places. shane got his first pool cue when he was 2 and went to the poolroom 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 poolroom. >> reporter: why did coming to the poolroom make you feel better? >> when you walk in the poolroom, what do you see? you see people having a good time. >> reporter: but it was more than that. he had prodigious ability for ththinking s strokes ahehead. hehe a and hisis uncncle loaded
8:45 pm
rv looooking for money games.s. ofof course t they did, thehe h, that stetealth roadd man armed y with a a woodenn stick and confidenence divororcing the lo from theheir cashsh, has b been romanticicized for decacades, n least byby paul newman.n. thisis r reporter was so taken pool hustling he once wrote a book about it. for van boening the romance hit the rocks, abruptly. i asked, play in the poolroom in tennessee, playing this guy for money, weren't playing for a whole lot and he was losing and picked up the cue ball and threw it at me. >> where did he hit you? >> right on the chest. >> that's the kind of thing you do to start a fight. >> yeah. >> how did you react if? >> 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 too dangerous. >> for the title. >> he chose to go legit and began playing and winning proper tournaments. though less lucrative than the rambling gambling life, van boening enjoyed being a professional. >> did you worry coming in off
8:46 pm
the road was going to impact your finances? >> i know so many pool players, the top pool players were making money, if they can do it, i can do it. >> reporter: but pool is a deceptively tricky sport. >> next up, two superpowers collide. >> ask shane's scottish counterpart jason shaw, another top player, earlier this year shaw holed up in a virginia poolroom for five days, and broke the straight pool record making 714 # shots in a row. >> the stuff that happens in pool will screw your brain up. you'll see shots and think how did that happen? you'll hear all day, how did that land over there? did you see that how that went in, in pool, you see every game something weird will happen. >> does that make it more exhilarating or frustrating? >> both. mentally you want to flip the table at some point. >> ever flipped a table? >> no, thought about it a few times. >> people come in, how hard could it be, a rectangle with six pockets. >> 20 minutes later there's
8:47 pm
still 15 balls on the table, and the guy is scratching his head and saying i thought this was easy. it's not. >> reporter: we watched you at derby city play jason shaw. >> jason who? >> reporter: is he your rival? >> yeah, it's been going on for several years how. he's a great player. we're always going to have a battle. >> reporter: you okay with that? >> yeah, you have to accept losing. if you don't accept losing, you're going to go crazy. >> how thick is this ice? >> 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 boening out onto a lake in the black hills. van boening goes fishing, every morning when he's back home. we didn't catch any fish. we did catch his drift, his take on the virtues of complete
8:48 pm
silence. vanity plate notwithstanding few extravagances come with being number one in pool, the rag tag pro tour barely televised in the u.s. struggles to draw much interest, or investment outside of pool die hards. >> how many sponsors? >> six sponsors. >> cues, tables and pool products. >> yes. >> any sponsors outside of pool? >> no. >> what can a top player make? >> only six figures. after expenses, maybe five figures. >> no one's making a million bucks. >> no, it's never happened. >> reporter: van boening says cleaning up the sport, doing away with back room 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 remember if you remember the -- do you recall
8:49 pm
what happened? >> oh, the gambler, is that what happened? yeah. >> reporter: it was morning at derby city and the action upstairs from the night before was still simmering. >> are they arguing? >> reporter: over the course of a few minutes two players who had bet on a game nearly came to blows. >> you cannot gamble. >> reporter: van boening could only shake his head. >> got to be a clean sport. >> reporter: enter pro pool's unlikely new guardian, emily fraser of the british sports promoter, the company revamped pro darts and snooker in the uk, streamlining circuits and turning top players into celebrities who make millions. >> that's where the trophy sits. >> reporter: 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? >> oh, an absolute mess. >> reporter: why do you say that? >> the first ever u.s. open i did in 2019, oh my gosh, the
8:50 pm
players turned up, they were in jeans, i'm going, hang on a second, love, what's happening here, why is this guy turning up in jeans? fraser has asked fro players to dress the part but won't ask hem to give up their side hustles. >> all of the basement tables and the money matches, that's brilliant. >> you do? >> yeah, i think 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 of years time they won't need to have any money matches. >> 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. >> reporter: she 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 fraser brought in bigger live audiences and ramped up tv production. she's kept one pool hallmark,
8:51 pm
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 boening. 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 boening is mobbed at pool tournaments but can still walk through an airport unbothered. >> he's no lebron james, and i totally understand that, and i recognize that, and 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. >> reporter: are they lovable? >> yes, some of them. >> reporter: 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
8:52 pm
shane van boening junior open. >> future pros? >> oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, they have so much passion for the game. i'm going to shoot this. >> reporter: back at the pool hall in rapid city we experience pool's highs and lows in the same hour. didn't let me hit a ball. ever the sport's gentleman shane van boening wouldn't let us leave without setting up a trick shot. pool may or may not clean up its act but any sport that can provide this pure simple thrill. >> go right down the middle? >> right down the middle. >> you reckon it will survive just fine. >> oh, oh. you got that. whatat if you cocould make analyzining a big babank's dat. no big deaeal? go on.n... wewell, what i if you partrtr wiwith ibm andnd red hat,, use a a hybrid cloloud solutin to c connect datata across c c,
8:53 pm
ththen analyzeze all that t a with watsoson. okay, , but this n needs toto meet our.r... securirity standarards? yup. complianance standarards? mm-hmm. so t they get ththe insights they n need... yup. in real l time... check.k. ...to makeke quick dececision? check. aaaand cheheck. thatat's the sololution ibmm and d a global b bank create. what w will you crcreate? ibm. let's's create. withth gold bondnd... you can agage on yourr owown terms. retinol ovovernight memea. the smoooothing benenefits of retininol. are now for your whole body. plus, fast-working crepe cocorrector dimininishes wrinknkled skin in j just two dadays. gold bond.d. chchampion youour skin. you know that feeling of having to rewash dishes that didn't g get clean? i don't.t. new cacascade platatinum plus has s me doing d dishes... differenently. scscrub? soak?k? nope. i i just scrapape, load and i'm m done. only platitinum plus is biggeger. wiwith double e the dawn g gre fighting p power and doububle ththe scrubbining power. for a no r rewash cleaean... and a cabinet ready shine. rewash? not in my house.
8:56 pm
♪ from ththe mountainins to t the coast..... ♪ ♪ heatitin' up the e kitchen♪ ♪ we got sosomethin dififferen♪ ♪ spreadidin' good vibes all l day ♪ ♪ todos a a la mesa ♪ ♪ que buenana la mezclala ♪ ♪ it dodon't get nono better♪ ♪ livivin' in thehe golden sts♪ ♪ l lovin' thisis land everery♪ ♪ norte a a sur lo pupuedes ve♪ ♪ nadada se puedede comparar♪ ♪ livin' ' in the gololden sta♪ ♪ vive e en el e estado dorarado...yeah ♪ every y business deserveses a great d deal. that's w why comcastst busins ♪ livi is l launching t thesta♪ mobilele made freeee event. with o our businesess internet, , new and exexistig customers s can get one yeyear of unlilimitd mobile foror free. it's ourur best inteternet. powered d by the nexext gegeneration 1 10g networkrkd with 99.9%9% reliabilility. plus onene line of f free mobile foror an entirere yea. itit's the mobobile made f e event-happppening now.w. geget started d for just $49.9.99 a month.h.
8:57 pm
plplus, ask hohow to get o one line o of unlimiteted mobil. comcasast businesess, powewering possisibilities. i'm sharyn alfonsi, we'll be back sununday with anothther e n of "6060 minutes."." withth hyaluroninic acid, plus 3 e essential c ceramids to h help restorore my n natural bararrier. so we're c cerave cleaean. cerave hydydrating cleleanse.
8:58 pm
just between us, you knoww whwhat's betteter than mopopp? ananything! ugh. well, i swswitched to swiwiffer wetjejet, and itit's awesomeme. it's an n all-in-onene, that absbsorbs dirtt anand grime dedeep inside.. anand it helpsps prevent strereaks and hahaze. wetjet i is so worthth it. love it, o or yourur money .
9:00 pm
251 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
KPIX (CBS) Television Archive Television Archive News Search Service The Chin Grimes TV News ArchiveUploaded by TV Archive on