Michael van Gerwen charges: Darts World Cup? “A Big Corona Bomb”

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Michael van Gerwen charges
Darts World Cup? “A Big Corona Bomb”

From Kevin Schulte

Michael van Gerwen has beaten almost everyone in the history of the Darts World Cup, but he is also powerless against the corona virus. “MvG” is out after a positive test. The Dutchman blames the host’s lax rules for the infection.

The Darts World Championship loses one of its draft horses. The three-time champion and long-time dominator Michael van Gerwen was eliminated without a fight after a positive corona test. Actually, “MvG” should have played his second World Cup match against Englishman Chris Dobey on Tuesday evening, but the virus has ruined the Dutchman’s dream of the title. Outsider Dobey moves into the round of 16 without a fight.

Van Gerwen had already started shaking on Monday. The quick test of his best friend and training partner Vincent van der Voort, who should have competed against James Wade on Monday evening, gave a positive result. The “Dutch Destroyer” is taken out of the tournament, Wade receives a bye. “From the moment I tested positive, I told him not to get too close to me,” said van der Voort on Monday evening in a telephone interview with the Dutch television broadcaster RTL 7 said with regard to van Gerwen. The duo had the world number 17 on Christmas Eve. Dirk van Duijvenbode met for a Christmas dinner together.

MvG distributes against the organizer

But the isolation of the 46-year-old comes too late for his buddy van Gerwen. “Mighty Mike” undergoes three quick tests on Monday evening, one of which is positive. The three-time world champion then arranges a PCR test at the PDC professional organization.

The result came late on Tuesday afternoon: positive. Michael van Gerwen is out and has to go to quarantine at the player’s hotel in London. “I didn’t see it coming,” said van Gerwen on Tuesday evening to the Dutch portal “AD Sportwereld”.

PDC obeys all the rules, but …

Van Gerwen then calls out for a general criticism. The PDC did not do enough to prevent infection. “The PDC will always say that they obeyed government rules, but they could have done more. The controls weren’t strong enough. It’s just a big corona bomb now.”

Indeed, the PDC adheres to all infection control measures imposed by the UK government. The venue in the Alexandra Palace allows up to 3000 spectators per session, that is the maximum capacity. So just as many darts fans can enter the hall as before Corona. In “Ally Pally” the 3G rule applies – vaccinated, recovered, tested. Spectators should only remove the mask at their own place.

No matter how good or bad the rules are in theory, there are huge shortcomings in practical application. The PDC seems to be doing little to ensure that the rules are followed. So fans with masks can only be seen sporadically. And even the vaccination, convalescence or test certificates at the entrance are, according to a report of the “World” hardly or only inadequately checked.

“I could have fooled everyone”

The following applies to the 96 World Cup participants: They are allowed to move freely, in the player’s hotel, in the city. During the walk-on, “high fives” with the spectators should be avoided, as well as the usual clapping with the opponent before the start of the match. On the respective game day, the players also have to prove a negative corona test.

The explosive: According to ntv.de information, a standard self-test is sufficient, the results of which the players show. There is apparently no control to determine whether the test is being used correctly. In theory, this offers the possibility of cheating by giving a negative test to someone other than your own. Michael van Gerwen confirmed this in the Dutch media: “I could have fooled everyone. But I want to be able to look in the mirror myself. Corona kills people, so I didn’t do it. It’s my moral duty.” The PDC left a request from ntv.de about the test procedure unanswered.

After the involuntary end of the 2014, 2017 and 2019 world champions, Dutch darts fans are already trembling about their next tournament hope. Dirk van Duijvenbode, who had spent Christmas with “MvG” and van der Voort, meets Gerwyn Price on Wednesday evening. A negative test result is a prerequisite for being able to compete at all.

Hopefully, a correct result will actually be shown. The more reliable PCR testing is not intended for contact persons of infected people in Great Britain. It just becomes “It is strongly recommended to carry out a rapid corona test daily for seven days or up to ten days after the last contact with the person who tested positive.”According to the British government’s Corona regulations.

Stricter corona rules “would have been practical”

Van Gerwen says he was “very careful”. For example, he and Van der Voort would have “avoided the breakfast room because we found it too crowded.” Even before the aforementioned Christmas dinner with van Duijvenbode and van der Voort, everyone involved tested each other. “We were all negative. I don’t know where I got it.”

For the superstar of the scene, it is clear that the organization of the World Cup is to blame for the corona chaos. The PDC should have checked every day who went in and out of the player’s hotel, criticized the 32-year-old. “They didn’t do that. According to the British government, they don’t have to either. But it would have been practical to protect their own organization and the World Cup.”

In view of these impressions, the PDC slid into the corona chaos with the staging of the Darts World Cup. Not everyone shares the view. In the participant environment, for example, the assessments sometimes differ widely. Individual voices report “very strict controls” on the part of the PDC, others report that there are hardly any protective measures, which tends to support Michael van Gerwen’s statements. However, reports can also be heard according to which, among other things, the guests of the Dutch World Cup participants in the hotel were extremely careless.

World Cup now “devalued” for Gerwyn Price

The fact is that the PDC paid a high price. For having decided against adding its own tightening to the British government’s barely existing corona protective measures from the start. As in the previous year, the host could have held the tournament in a so-called “bubble”. The players would then not have been allowed to leave the hotel, contacts with the outside world would no longer have been possible, at least in theory, and the risk of infection would have been minimized.

After all: Since all World Cup starters are vaccinated at least twice, the hope of largely symptom-free courses of the infected is great and justified – if Omikron does not throw a spanner in the works. But the quality and the attraction of the tournament suffer massively due to the top star’s loss. The World Cup will be “devalued”, wrote the world number one and defending champion Gerwyn Price on Instagram. “I prefer to play against the best to be the best. It’s sad that some players are eliminated because of Covid.”