The Olympic champion, a great fan, went to watch the semi-finals in London. Tonight at 8.30pm (Dazn) there will be the youngest final ever between the Englishman Littler and the Dutchman van Veen
At the Ally Pally, the nickname of Alexandra Palace, a wonderful Victorian building in Alexandra Park, the temple of darts in London, the World Cup final will be staged today, offering a record prize money of 5 million pounds, one million pounds for the winner (over one million euros). It will be the youngest final ever played: Luke Littler (aka Luke The Nuke), English, 18 years old, reigning world champion (the youngest ever) against Gian van Veen, Dutch, 23 years old. There were 128 in the running, and after a spectacular competition, also very popular in Italy (broadcast by Dazn), today a little after 8.30pm there will be a winner.
there was also torture
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At Ally Pally yesterday there was an exceptional guest. Olympic champion Filippo Tortu attended the semi-finals. And it wasn’t the first time for him, in love with this traditional English sport which is also gaining a following in our country. The Italian sprinter immediately immersed himself in the unique, colourful, noisy atmosphere of Ally Pally, where entering in a costume is the norm. In an interview he said he went once disguised as a Zorro, another time as a traffic cone. Yesterday he chose an ancient Egyptian costume, recounting the event on Dazn’s social channels.
tradition
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1908 is a key year in the history of darts: they were in danger of being banned as a game of chance in English pubs, but a trial changed everything. In Leeds, handler Foot Anakin demonstrated to the judges that darts was a game of skill, repeatedly hitting the twenty-slice with surgical precision, while the judges failed. The ruling established that it was not a question of chance, but of pure skill: from there darts definitively became a pub game. They grew in popularity, until the first live TV broadcasts in the 1970s: a resonance accelerator, which also spread to other countries, such as Germany. In the United Kingdom it has now become one of the most watched sports on TV after football, without ever losing the spontaneous atmosphere in which it was born. World Cup tickets have been sold out for some time. A race to take part in a real entertainment show in an atmosphere of great sharing and fun: colours, choirs, enthusiasm, a bit of madness. The mess doesn’t stop even in the high tension moments of the matches. In short, don’t go to Ally Pally without at least knowing the chant “Stand up if you love the darts”.
the final
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And players are increasingly becoming characters, loved by the public: perhaps because it is easier to identify with them than the unattainable champions of other sports. Their abilities are far from common, but exceptional, like all high-level athletes on the other hand: hand-eye coordination, extreme precision, calculating ability, cold blood. The new generation is taking over the scene. Luke Littler, who had already played in a world final at 16, winning it at 17 last year, has 2 million followers on Instagram, in the UK he is a star, so much so that he was named “Young Sports Personality of the Year” by the BBC in 2024. Gian van Veen, Dutch, graduated in 2023 in aerospace engineering, and before making his breakthrough in darts he worked at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. His rise was very rapid.
La Gazzetta dello Sport
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