Darts World Cup: Waiting for the “German star”

The German fans are having a similar experience at the Darts World Championship as at the Four Hills Tournament, which is taking place at the same time. They have been waiting for years for a German to achieve overall success, despite constant passionate support. After all, ski jumping fans have celebrated the triumphs of local athletes on the tour in the past. In darts, however, no German has ever won the most prestigious tournament in the calendar. Since it was first held in 1978, Germany has been waiting for an arrow throwing champion. And nothing will change in this balance this year – on Monday Ricardo Pietreczko was the last remaining German to be eliminated from the World Cup.

After three convincing victories at the start, Pietreczko had no chance against the Englishman Nathan Aspinall. The 30-year-old joked about his performance that he was probably the worst player in a round of 16. It “just didn’t work out” and he never found his game. One possible reason he gave was that he found it difficult to switch off emotionally after arriving. Because his opponent’s opening song – “Mr. Brightside” by the US band The Killers – is his girlfriend’s favorite song. As always, she sat in the audience for support.

Shortly after the start, Pietreczko lost an impressive ten legs in a row. He tried to cover up his inferiority by making fun of his own throws and applauding his opponent. This gave the impression that the Berlin native was “a strange character”. That’s what Aspinall had called him before the match. He could definitely understand that, Pietreczko joked, because he doesn’t speak “good English” and therefore acts “very reserved” among colleagues on the professional tour.

In any case, Pietreczko’s performance gave the impression that he was overwhelmed by the expectations from home. He admitted that he felt the media interest and dealing with it was challenging. The efforts from the previous rounds of the game were also probably worthless.

For Pietreczko, reaching the round of 16 was still the greatest success of his career. This also improved the otherwise sobering balance of the German arrow throwers. Apart from Pietreczko, the other five – a new record in the list of participants – only won two out of seven matches. The seeded players Martin Schindler and Gabriel Clemens even lost their opening duels. This means that Clemens’ participation in the semi-finals two years ago remains the best German result in the Ally Pally.

Looking back, Clemens said about his time at the broadcaster Dazn that he would “do things differently” today in a comparable situation than he did back then. He could have trained a lot more following his unexpected success. But, you have to be honest, there were opportunities to earn good money back then. At some point he ended up back in reality, but the time was nice and instructive.

The substructure is still missing in Germany

Basically, the number of German darts professionals has increased continuously in recent years. At this World Cup, the Germans, together with Wales, formed the third largest faction – after the darts core countries England (26) and the Netherlands (16). Compared to the British, where darts has always been a practiced pub sport, the sport in this country is only just beginning to become known to a larger, younger audience. As a result, the Germans still lack the foundation of darts players – which also affects their competitiveness at the top. In order to get more people excited about darts, it certainly helps that the top 50 players in the rankings can now make a good living from their sport.