"It was scary not being able to throw a dart" - Understanding the mysterious condition of Dartitis

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“I love darts, regardless of what happens, and finding little wins, and taking positives, it's a slow process, and a lot of players don't ever get back to their full potential.”

Imagine this - you've played darts all your life, you're as good as ever, in the best form of your life. Then, one day, you start your routine, just as you have thousands of times before. You step up to the oche, line up your throw, and you go to release the dart, but it won't leave your hand. You just cannot let go of the dart. This is dartitis.

Dartitis is not a physical condition. In most cases, players who are suffering with it have no physical issues that stop them from releasing a dart.

In its most simple form, it is a mental condition that prevents a player from finishing their throw.

Dr Linda Duffy was a former world number one in Women’s darts throughout the eighties and following her retirement, she has been researching the sport, achieving a PHD and now works as a professor at Middlesex University.

She has extensively studied the condition and she says dartitis is actually an anxiety disorder.

Duffy said: “It's triggered by different types of performance anxiety, competitive anxiety and that's what it comes under. For some it comes on quickly, sometimes it comes on slowly in other cases.

“One of the key things about dartitis, is that it's very unique and subjective to each individual player.”

The condition is often likened to ‘the yips’ that golf players suffer from, where involuntary movements or spasms disrupt their technique.

A number of high-profile names in the sport such as Eric Bristow and Nathan Aspinall have suffered from the condition.

Bristow went from being a World Championship winner in 1986, to suddenly being unable to let go of his darts as usual in a tournament later that year. He never quite recovered to become the player he once was.

But there are also thousands of amateur players who have lost their hobbies when they realised, they couldn’t throw a dart anymore.

Speaking to different players who have dealt with dartitis, Dr Linda Duffy’s research proved true. There was one word that every player repeated – “anxiety”.

Horvath Bence, 20 from Belgium, noticed that something was wrong after he started to play darts again after the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When Covid hit, lockdown hit, I didn't have a camera so I didn't play against anyone for months and I sort of gave up on training as well. And when the summer came three months later, I returned and I started training again and I realised that after like half an hour my arms just started acting up.

“I was concerned about every single dart that I couldn't release and that just put me in this negative spiral where I was always thinking ‘oh my god, I'm not going to be able to release the next dart either and what's going to happen’

“It was scary not being able to throw a dart at the board, it looks like a simple task but then your brain just decides otherwise.”

Bence felt the pressure of trying to be as good as he was before COVID lead to him struggling when he picked his darts back up.

For James Lobley, 26, dartitis completely changed playing darts for him, and after he started to struggle, playing in his pub league was a difficult experience for him.

“I would play players where normally I'd beat this person, if I'm playing well. But then, you're struggling to release the dart, and you start doubting yourself, and you realise you're taking forever to throw a dart, and it's such a horrible place to be.

“People you don't really know on the opposite team hoping you play really badly, as much as they're kind of sympathetic to you, they want to see you lose and not play well, and it's not a nice place, especially with darts being quite an individual game, it's hard for anyone to be really supportive, because a lot of people don't really understand what's going on.”

There is no quick fix for dartitis and the frustration from trying to fix the condition can often make it worse.

Dr Linda Duffy detailed the ways she has seen players try to recover from the issue, from hypnosis to psychology,

“A lot of players turn to hypnosis,” she said. “They talk to sports psychologists such as myself, they practice a lot but I think once you've had dartitis, you don't really get rid of it, you learn to play with it.”

But she believes there is no cure, but rather interventions players can take to help them keep playing.

“The first thing I say to players is, look you know there's no magic wand here that's going to cure you but I will teach you how to play with it so at least they can carry on and have a career to some extent.

“I would say that there are interventions in place that can CBT [cognitive behaviour therapy] being the main one.”

For amateur players, the route to a recovery can be difficult, with fewer resources available to non-professionals compared to celebrated darts stars.

James explained all the avenues he had explored in an attempt to fix his struggles: “I try everything, like we talk about throwing in the dark, or not looking when you’re throwing. But I think a lot of mine stemmed from confidence so for me, it was just finding enjoyment from the game, regardless of how it affected me.”

James helps out at a darts academy in Walkden and he found that being around the sport he loves, helps him look beyond his issues with dartitis.

“Helping out with the academy was a way to help me,” he said. “I love darts, regardless of what happens, and finding little wins, and taking positives, it's a slow process, and a lot of players don't ever get back to their full potential.”

Some players can end up recovering from the condition, such as one of darts’ greatest players, Eric Bristow.

He started to suffer after his 1985 world title win, and was a shadow of his former self. And whilst he was never as good as he once was, he recovered and regained his number one ranking in 1989.

There is a lot we still don’t understand about the condition as a whole but it leads a key example of the connection between mind and body in sport.

For some, the battle isn’t just at the oche, it can have a much wider effect as the condition steals the hobbies away from those passionate players at all levels.