Experiment with different grips to find what feels comfortable and stable for you. Practice regularly to develop muscle memory and aim for the specific target areas on the dartboard. More generally, the prospect of Olympic medals would increase Chinese, Japanese and American funding and participation, which could only improve the overall technical quality of the game. It would also continue turbo-charging the women’s game with the ultimate aim of removing gender barriers from the sport.

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There are a few reasons why darts has not been recognised as an Olympic sport, with one of the key ones being the long-standing perception of darts as a ‘pub game’ by some of the general public. Compared to many other Olympic sports, darts is not as physically demanding, although it does still require a lot of mental concentration and skill to consistently hit the correct targets on the dartboard. The WDF currently has 70 member countries and facilitates the WDF World Cup championships that have a universal points ranking system. WDF is also now a member of the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), which is the umbrella organization for all sports, Olympic and non-Olympic. Despite all of the progress darts has made, with global tournaments and millions of viewers worldwide, darts is yet to be included in the Olympics. Raymond van Barneveld once expressed his opinion that darts has no place in the Olympics because it is reserved for trained athletes.

Founded in 1976, the World Darts Federation acts as the organizer of all significant darts championship tournaments around the world. One of the requirements is that there be an international governing body that oversees and organizes the sport. This governing body must meet IOC standards and be a member of the Association of IOC Recognized International Sports Federations (ARISF). Darts federations PDC and WDF are both currently not recognized as sports federations by the IOC. As well as bringing in a new audience, seeing darts in the Olympics could help increase participation too, inspiring more people to try the game out.

• The world of professional darts understands exactly what it is, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
• It requires exceptional mental resilience and dexterity, alongside greater physicality than most target sports.
• It’s essential to choose quality equipment that suits your playing style and level of expertise.

What equipment do I need to play darts?

The fierce competition from other sports visit this web-site is another explanation for why darts has not been included in the Olympic programme yet. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s see if darts meets the requirements to be an Olympic sport. To qualify for the Olympics, a sport must have a governing international body recognized by the International Olympic Committee (ICO).

From a logistical point of view, darts is also a sport that wouldn’t take a great deal of organising due to the space that’s needed and wouldn’t need a separate purpose-built arena built for it. Moreover, darts likely isn’t practised in a broad enough spread of countries, across enough of the continents, to qualify for IOC recognition by its universality standards. If you’re reading this over breakfast at 8am on Saturday, January 4, here’s a hot tip … GET UP AND SWITCH ON THE DARTS!