Just a few short years after winning the BDO World Championship in 1995, a darts player found himself in a scenario that was quite unfortunate.
The sport of darts is now one of the sports that is expanding at the quickest rate in Northern Europe. Players like Luke Littler are raking in enormous sums of money as a result of their efforts.
As of right now, Littler, who is 18 years old, and Luke Humphries, who is now ranked first in the world, are the biggest earners in the sport.
According to reports, ‘Cool Hand’ has amassed a total of £1,905,750 in prize money over the course of the past two years, while Littler has amassed a total of £1,292,000 during the same time period.
In spite of this, darts professionals have not always been rewarded as richly as they are now. Richie Burnett, a former BDO world champion and a quarter-finalist in the PDC World Championship, discovered this fact after he encountered challenging circumstances.
The BDO World Championship was won by Burnett, who was 58 years old at the time, in 1995. However, by the 2000s, he was having financial difficulties and had very little to show for his achievements in the sport.
According to him, he once had “no money” to buy a kettle, and as a result, he had to drain hot water from his radiator in order to cook a Pot Noodle for his tea. This was the extent of his financial situation.
This is what Burnett had to say about the situation: “When times were tough and I had no money, I was in Wigan for a tournament and I bought myself a Pot Noodle for my tea.”
“But I didn’t have a kettle to boil water for it,” he said further. “The only thing I could do was empty the radiator in my room and use the hot water that was coming from that. It was all soily and brown but it worked and the Pot Noodle went down OK.
On the other hand, I had used a pair of nail scissors to open the valve, and it refused to close again, which resulted in hot, brown water streaming out of the valve.
My only option was to place a dish below it so that it could collect everything. My inability to get much sleep was due to the fact that I had to get up every hour in order to pour water down the drain.
However, in spite of the difficulties he had, the Welsh darts player was able to recover and make it all the way to the last eight of the Grand Prix in 2014.
“I’ve been an idiot over the years, I’ve really underachieved, I’ve been an absolute maniac but I’ve never harmed anybody, only been a fool to myself,” Burnett further elaborated.
“I’m just making up for lost time.”
xz
