Beer-group pressure brings back an age of innocence
By Matthew Syed

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4-1977837,00.html

Our correspondent sees tungsten gladiators hitting the doubles on stage and
off

THE elephantine girths and prodigious alcohol consumption of top players is
often cited as evidence that darts is - how shall we put this? - different
to other sports. In truth, however, these are mere details. The real divide
is not evidenced by the number of cirrhotic livers or layers of subcutaneous
fat but by a difference in philosophy. Darts is a throwback to the days when
sport was gloriously unscientific.

A few minutes in the players' lounge at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley
Green, Surrey, venue for the World Championships, is sufficient to
demonstrate the difference. The players' lounge is something that, in
various guises, is common to all sporting venues - an area adjacent to the
auditorium where the players can prepare for matches.

In any other sport, athletes would use the area to perform a precise and
well-honed set of routines designed to generate optimum performance. In my
case, as a former table tennis professional, this would involve a 15-minute
warm-up and a 45-minute practice session followed by ten minutes of solitude
to run through some mental exercises. Each aspect of preparation was planned
in conjunction with a technical expert. Nothing was left to chance.

Over at Lakeside, on the other hand, the players' lounge is a bar. Nothing
wrong with that except for the fact that preparation consists of a
backslapping conversation with a few chums, a stint on one of the practice
boards and a tug on the shirt from one of the officials to indicate that the
match is about to start. There are no coaches or psychologists mulling
around. The only nod to sporting modernity is the occasional flexing of the
shoulders.

Not even the alcohol consumption seems to be calibrated. Andy Fordham necked
three bottles of beer and two double brandies in the 30 minutes leading up
to his first-round match with Simon Whitlock, but not in a way to suggest
that he was counting. As he walked towards the curtain for his match he
grabbed and swigged another bottle. Rather naively, I ventured the
proposition that he might be a little tipsy. The consensus was that he was
far too sober.

Whitlock was abstemious by comparison, downing a few vodkas and a couple of
Jack Daniels and coke. Afterwards I asked whether this was the amount he
always drank before big matches. "Nah," he said in a clipped Aussie accent.
"I came down to the lounge quite early so I just kept drinking until it took
away the edge. I don't really have a set quantity." Pure sporting anarchy.

None of this is intended to criticise, merely to note that darts players
approach matches in a way that disappeared from other sports circa 1950. One
could sum it up in one word: amateurism. That is not to say that the players
do not get paid - the first prize at Lakeside is £60,000 - but rather that
they lack rigour. Psychologists, physiologists, video analysts - no top
sportsman outside darts would be unfamiliar with these methods. When I
mentioned them to Ted Hankey, he giggled.

Darts is locked in an age of pre-scientific innocence, something that many
might regard philosophically superior to out-and-out professionalism. After
all, rigour can be tyrannical. Read a great novel at leisure and it is
pleasurable. Read the same novel for an English Literature A level and it is
robbed of all romanticism. Darts players love their sport so much that they
stay on after defeat to watch. The first thing I did after I was knocked out
of the Sydney Olympics was to book the next available flight home.

Modern sport is an exercise in deconstruction, a breaking down of everything
into component parts so that it can be put together again with the aid of
experts. Coaches are no longer gnarled old gurus who spout old wives' tales
but white-coated bores with clipboards. Science, like money, has altered the
philosophy of professional sport. It has become something to be learnt, not
lived.

Darts players are different. They would still compete at the World
Championships if the prize-money dried up and if no one was watching but the
missus and a few chums. They are visibly bemused by the raucous attendance
of 1,500 fans and, still more, by the presence of TV cameras. They enjoy the
acclaim but you can see that their love of the sport transcends anything so
ephemeral. Winning is a bonus. Stuff the science.

matthew.syed@...