Ladies
B.D.O. Championship 2008
Trina Gulliver
And
Francis Hoenselaar
2007
Trina Gulliver, the 7 times Ladies World
Professional Darts Champion at Lakeside defended her crown at the start of this
year. The publication of Trina’s new Autobiographical book “The Golden
Girl” coincided with the competition to maximise publicity, but perhaps this
was tempting fate a little bit too much. In an interview between games Trina
said that the standard was getting better in Ladies darts all the time and she
was getting more and more nervous each year.
One of last year’s two finalists, Francis Hoenselaar, was beaten in the quarter finals by Staphanie Smee who is a baker from Gosport.
The
earlier rounds were OK for Trina as she beat Julie Gore in the Quarters, but in
the Semi Finals she faced Karin Krappen who had beaten her earlier at the
Masters at Bridlington. Trina got her revenge though and won through to the
final where she played Russian Anastasia Dobromysova who had beaten Smee in the
Semi’s.
The final could not have been worse for Trina as she only managed a very poor average of around 73 points per throw. This just did not compare to one year previously, when Trina had won, when she had the second best average in the whole competition including the men. Annastasia’s average of 87 simply left Trina trailing behind. On at least one occasion everything seemed to be conspiring against Trina when she needed a big score and she hit two badly wanted treble twenties with the third dart smack on target, only for it to knock out one of the twenties and then fall on the floor as well.
Anastatsia made history as the first Lady to beat Trina in the B.D.O. knock out and also as the first Russian player to win the coveted title. The £6,000 prize she won though was rather less than the £85,000 that Mark Webster, the Men’s Champion took home to Wales.