The Darts World Cup, which takes place every year between the years, has long since reached German living rooms. Why the former pub sport is so popular and doesn’t even stop at a German natural law.
Let all the darts experts tell you what they want. About what hard and disciplined athletes these darts professionals are now supposed to be. The fact remains: fat men are fat men. And fat men are the exception in top sport. But darts is a collection of exceptions and oddities anyway.
The name for example. Darts. Comes from French and means something like javelin or spear. Makes sense, after all, the fat men aim their arrows, which are up to 30.5 centimeters long and weigh a maximum of 21 grams, at a target that is 2.37 meters away and on average 34 centimeters wide. What makes less sense: that darts in France are not called darts, but “fléchettes”. But good. In France, it is still strictly forbidden to kiss on train platforms. It is legally possible to marry dead people. Maybe you can’t blame everything on darts.
Crazy fans, crazy dream
Martin Schindler is one of five Germans who will be competing at the World Darts Championship in London from Friday. The man from Strausberg is self-confident and wants to forget the disappointment of the past year. By Fabian Friedmannmore
Popular even without an exceptional German talent
Which also has its oddities to offer beyond the quibbling of words. One of the strangest oddities: being incredibly popular in Germany too. And so far without any exceptional German talent. Because let’s not kid ourselves, TV Germany has so far been particularly interested in a sport when the Germans show the rest of the world how it’s done. That’s how it was with Steffi Graf and Boris Becker in tennis. That’s how it was with Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel in Formula 1. It’s the same with biathlon, ski jumping and basketball.
Darts is the exception. Even though the German Gabriel Clemens surprisingly reached the semi-finals of the World Cup last year and achieved a record audience rating of 11.8 percent. But the final without German participation also ended up in a similar sphere. Just like the annual World Cup madness in London’s “Ally Pally”, as the time-honored Alexandra Palace, which was once built as a leisure and recreation park, is affectionately called, has become a must-attend event for sports fans for several years now. But why exactly?
Made by a Pfiffikus
One answer to this is Barry Hearn, now 75 years old. He’s a busy sports marketer who grew up in a council flat in Dagenham, London. His father is a bus driver, his mother is a cleaner and he, Barry, is a smart guy. A self-made man who first made a career as an auditor and then switched to marketing recreational sports.
Still a Berliner at heart: “Pikachu” Ricardo Pietreczko
Martin Schindler from Brandenburg is already a regular guest at the Darts World Cup in London. For Ricardo Pietreczko, however, it is his first World Cup start. The 29-year-old lives in Franconia, but is a Berlin boy. By Mats Nickelsenmore
The boom in darts is, above all, his legacy. Hearn made the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), the organizing association of the World Championship in the “Ally Pally”, number one in darts and darts a mass and cult event. He built his protégé, the record world champion Phil Taylor, into a global brand with the aura of invincibility. He took darts out of the corner of the bar and onto the big stage. But above all, he found the perfect niche with the World Cup at Christmas time.
Darts is out of competition
This is due to the special party atmosphere in “Ally Pally”. The (often funny) songs and the flashy outfits and disguises that are part of good form as soon as you are a spectator at the Darts World Cup. The players’ snappy opening anthems and their sometimes crazy nicknames (“Snakebite”, “Dreamboy”, “The Samurai”).
And because there is nothing else. It’s the old village pub phenomenon. Where do people go if there is only one place that people can go? Even. The Darts World Cup is virtually out of competition. Between the years and especially in the evenings, when winter sports wax your skis in a dream. And king football (except in England, but that’s another story) is on pause.
It’s the perfect TV sport for the holidays. To paraphrase Harald Juhnke: It’s easy to sit and watch darts on TV. Especially in the later rounds of the World Championship, which this year runs from December 15th to January 3rd, especially between Christmas and New Year, darts is the perfect leisure time to relieve the family stress of the holidays. With lots of recreational islands.
About doping and alcohol abuse in professional darts
For many people, darts is a pub sport and one or two beers are part of it. But doping is also common in professional darts – including with alcohol. The latter does not currently fall under the officially banned doping substances. We talk about this with Manuel Kramer, Vice President of the German Dart Association.more
Cheese platters and nerves
501 is the name of the game played by darts professionals. Whoever is the first to set this number of points to exactly zero (and at the end with a throw on a double field) wins a so-called leg. Whoever wins three legs wins one set. In the quarterfinals (“Best of Nine”), for example, a player needs to win five sets or 15 legs to advance to a round. Things take longer in the semifinals (“Best of 11”) and final (“Best of 13”).
So there’s plenty of time to refill the red wine, check the cheese plate for gaps and test new techniques for picking up pretzel sticks. Before there is actually big (nervous) sport to be seen in the crucial moments. Whose admiration is easy to create.
After all, everyone watching has probably tried to do a 180 before. So the highest total score in darts that can be achieved with the three arrows in each round. This is achieved after hitting an eight millimeter wide field three times in a row from a distance of 2.37 meters. This is rarely if ever achieved by hobby players. Nobody knows what a duel with Lionel Messi really feels like. However, you can easily find out how difficult it is to throw a “180”.
Whether with a big belly or without.
Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, December 23, 2023, 7:15 a.m
