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Alba Tenza
Monday, 12 August 2024, 18:53
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Arm bent at a right angle and dart held horizontally to the ground: darts players know the technique. Experience, and ambition, go a long way. It was just five years ago that Salvador Rodríguez used to meet other residents of Pizarra, a small town in Malaga province, to practise the sport in a local bar. This is where the idea of making Pizarra an official home for darts players was born. To do this, Rodríguez started with the basics. He formed a team made of a few friends and acquaintances, the foundations of a club that now has 40 members and "continues to grow", he told SUR.
As the group grew, they had the idea of forming an association to eventually obtain their own premises, where they could play regularly and promote the sport to younger players. Today, this organisation is known as the Club de Dardos de Pizarra (Pizarra Darts Club) and has become a benchmark for the sport at a provincial and even international level. The organisation has been able to hold three darts tournaments, with participants from all over Spain and prizes for its players, who compete in different categories.
The first tournament took place two years ago, with 30 participants. But last Friday and Saturday, 150 players took part, a testament to the competition's success and popularity.
"Our venue is the bar, where we play almost every day, but this year we are finally going to have our own premises from September; it is a great achievement for us and a means to have a good pool of younger players," said Rodríguez.
This year, the tournament took place in the events room at local restaurant Entrevalles, about 100 metres from the municipal swimming pool, where the competition was held last year.
"We have had a room with ten dartboards, with players from Almeria, Ciudad Real and other cities. In the end, what we are doing creating a home for this sport, because in Malaga there have always been people who are dedicated to playing darts, but there hasn't been a real nucleus for the sport as there is in countries like Germany or England, where there are people who make a living from darts," said Rodríguez. One of the highlights of this year's tournament was the participation of a women's team, achieving one of the association's goals. "In reality, it is not really necessary to create a separate category for them; a year ago we dreamed about this."
On this occasion, there were six different categories and a prize pool of 5,550 euros for the winners. There was a wide range of players, of all categories and levels. These included Jaime Núñez, Jesús Salate, Antonio Niño and David Ruiz.
One of the participants who stood out was Riky Pérez, a world darts champion, who travelled down to Malaga from Pilar de Horadada, in Alicante, to compete in this year's tournament. Pérez is a military man and a professional darts player: he is an EDU European Darts Champion, and has been playing for almost 19 years.
"I started playing with my friends when we went out for coffee, they would play table football and I would play darts, the owner of the place where we played was a semi-professional player and he signed me up to play in a team because he saw that I was quite good at it," said Pérez.
Now, his training is constant. "I try to play every day, when we are at this level we play as many leagues as we can, from Monday to Thursday we play league matches that last an hour or an hour and a half, then we try to train at home or at work," he said. Pérez also took the opportunity to display his own darts, which he designs himself and are available to buy, at the Pizarra tournament.
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