First European Darts Championship
About 1 Million people live in the city
of Frankfurt, Germany, and it is also home to the European
Central Bank. The city is where the
first European Darts Championship is being held at the Sudbanhof Arena. Europe generally used to
favour Soft Tip darts, but now that Steel
Tip darts are getting very popular in Germany it was decided to host the new
European Competition there. The Championship of course features Steel Tip darts and
is being Televised by the British ITV 4, TV station and organised by the P.D.C.
The first European Darts Championship will run over 4 days involving 32 players and some £200,000 in prize money with £50,000 going as the first prize. The top 16 PDC players gained automatic entry and there are 16 Qualifiers. Phil Taylor must be one of the favourites to win the competition, but a relatively short format has been chosen for the games, which, it is generally felt, gives lesser players more of a chance.
The 1st round is best of 9 legs, the 2nd and the quarter-finals are over 17 and it is 21 legs for the Semis and Final. The players must win by 2 clear legs and if the score gets to 7-7 in the first round before a clear winner is decided then there is a tie breaker with sudden death.
The opening day’s competition started with
a match between Colin “The Wizard” Osbourne against Mark Walsh. (Mark Hylton
from Rugeley beat Colin Osbourne in a May Bank Holliday competition at
Burton-On-Trent earlier this year.)
Walsh did suffer from Dartitus, but overcome it and is playing some good darts again. Walsh, who is 10 years older than “The Wizard,” got off to a slow start and was 4-2 down at one point. With an average score of 94.11 for Osbourne and 100.88 for Walsh, Walsh managed to fight his way back hitting 3 X 180’s in the process and he took the next 4 legs to make the final score 6-4.
Update. Later in the competition it was good to see local Stoke lad, Adrian "Jackpot" Lewis play some superb darts to take out Dutch champion Barneveld. Lewis seemed to lose some of his form in the next round, but still managed to beat Peter Manly and came face to face with his mentor Phil Taylor in the final. As the match got past the first few legs it was a bit one sided, but Lewis was delighted to have got so far, picked up the second prize of £25,000, and qualified for the next big competition at Wolverhampton, in the Grand Slam Of Darts, in a few weeks time.