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Maybe Great Britain Is Not So Great.

 

Although Great Britain invented the games of Football, Cricket, Golf and Tennis we don’t seem to win many of them. Foreign players seem to have taken our sports and adopted them as their own. It seems to me that maybe darts is heading the same way as more and more overseas players are not only qualifying for the big competitions, but winning them as well.

Raymond Barneveld from the Netherlands has become a legend in the last few years. (See Article) Barney has won many major titles and in 2006 after winning his fourth B.D.O. World Title the year before, he hoped to equal Bristow’s early feat of winning a world championship title five times, but he did not make it as he lost to fellow Dutchman Jelle Klaassen. Incredibly Barneveld also beat Taylor again in 2007 in the P.D.C. World Championship. In fact Taylor’s crown as the greatest darts player to have ever lived seems to have slipped a little in 2007 as he did not win as many titles as he has done previously. If he does not regain his form then there is little doubt that Barney will replace him as the Master of darts for a while at least.

Barneveld's success has encouraged many of his fellow countrymen to take up the sport and at every B.D.O. World Championship there seem to be more and more them, both as spectators and competitors. 6 Dutchmen qualified for this years B.D.O. World Championship at Lakeside and last year 7 Dutchmen qualified. Co Stompé, Remco van Eijden and a young lad called Fabien Roosenbrand who is only 19, all got through to the last 16 this year, but all were knocked out by the Quarters. Although Fabien lost to Simon Whitlock he beat Scotland’s number one player Gary Anderson in an earlier round and he looks set for a glistening career in the world of darts.

The enthusiasm for darts in Holland is also encouraged by the fact that the Dutch broadcasting company SBS-6 were back at Lakeside for their 11th consecutive year to transmit live darts to The Netherlands, and Eurosport also transmit over a lot of the rest of Europe where other countries seem to be taking up darts. Indeed Ladies darts is being  invaded as well, because for the first time the B.D.O. Ladies crown has gone to a young Russian girl called Annastasia Dobromysova. In fact this years ladies Quarter finalists consisted of 3 Dutch players and 1 Russian out of the 8 players.

It is not only European players that are making their presence felt in darts, but other players from further a field, such as Carl Mercer, who is largely unknown over here, and who came from Canada to play in the World Masters, are gaining more recognition. The B.D.O. crown has gone overseas the last 4 times, but not this year as instead it went to Wales in the form of the Welsh number one seed Mark Webster. In the final Webster played an Australian called Simon Whitlock (See Article) who was only the second Australian to reach the final. Fellow Queenslander Tony David is the only other Australian to get there and he won the BDO title in 2002 after overcoming the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia. Unfortunateley David was knocked out in the first round this year. After the superb final there is little doubt that Simon Whitlock will go on to make a name for himself as the darts “Wizard of Oz.”