90 minutes had almost passed and this game was still going on. A darts match, not a football game. It even went into extra time – and so a sporting drama occurred at Alexandra Palace.
People usually come to this area of north London for recreation. German darts player Martin Schindler may need a spa treatment after this third-round match at the World Darts Championship on Wednesday afternoon. With the score at 3:3 after six sets, a seventh round had to bring the decision. And the 27-year-old soon lost it in a final that was more like a thriller by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle than an arrow throwing competition.
Schindler’s opponent, the Englishman Scott Williams, could hardly believe what had just happened after he sank his match dart – and after this British-German darts duel he even mentioned the dark history: “One World Cup and one World War,” he said the stage, still charged with emotions, into the Sky Sports England microphone. On the island, this sentence is often used when a sporting victory has been achieved against a German rival. And for Williams it was a special, if not his greatest, victory on the world’s darts stages.
For Schindler it would have been one of the greatest career successes
For Schindler from Strausberg, it would have been one of his greatest career successes. He was the second German ever to reach the round of 16. Against Williams, he initially continued his convincing second-round performance against the Dutchman Jermaine Wattimena (3:1), but then lost the thread before he seemed to regain his composure. The last change of direction on the London stage, however, turned out to be to his disadvantage.
“I didn’t do much wrong, just minimally, a little bit,” said Schindler afterwards, visibly disappointed, at the Sport1 microphone. It was also hard to believe. With 13 perfect 180 throws, i.e. three arrows each into the triple 20 field on the round target, Schindler set a German World Cup record. He even had a better average rate than his opponent. And now he was a loser.
How could he still give that away? “I’ll be honest, after leading the set 2-0 I thought: I can win this thing here with 4-1, maybe 4-2,” said Schindler. He even thought a 4-0 win was possible, that’s how good it felt at the beginning on this stage, which he had always struggled with until then. But then: Williams came back, warrior style. “The Warrior” lived up to his name – and “The Wall” felt it. “He never gave up for a second,” said Schindler. “You have to give him credit for that.”
Before he won the first set after a break, the numerous German fans – including BVB professional Nico Schlotterbeck – celebrated the 27-year-old with chants of “Martin Schindler Ole”. In the end, his opponent increasingly succeeded in winning over the British audience with loud gestures of celebration – and that helped him on stage. Especially when the decision went into extending the sentence. From Schindler’s point of view, this damned seventh sentence.
And in the second of this four-part German-British duel, last year’s semi-finalist Gabriel Clemens finally lost to an Englishman later on Wednesday afternoon. Clemens clearly lost 1:4 in five sets against Dave Chisnall.