Van Barneveld: “I was an excited boxer, but I feel good again” NOW

Raymond van Barneveld is beyond the disappointment after his disastrous last World Cup darts. The five-time world champion was immediately eliminated in London last month and that blow hit him hard.

Van Barneveld surprisingly went down against American Darin Young in his last official tournament as a professional darter. The 52-year-old from The Hague looked very upset and said the loss never forgive himself.

“At that moment it felt like my heart was leaping out of my body. I couldn’t believe it. I had been struggling for a year, but I thought I would make it at the World Cup,” says Van Barneveld now, more than a month ago later, against Live Darts TV.

“I thought: is this it? It was very difficult. The interview I did Sky Sports giving was not great, I know, but that was how I felt at the time. “

The upset Van Barneveld gave in the interview with Sky answers of at most a few words. “I felt depressed. I was like an excited boxer, but now I feel good again. After three or four weeks I said to myself,” Ray, you have to move on. People shouldn’t remember that. You are five times world champion. ” “

“Sometimes I think: if only I had stopped in Ahoy”

Last March Van Barneveld said after the Premier League of Darts in Ahoy in Rotterdam already to stop darts, but he came back to that fairly quickly. He decided to continue until the World Cup, where he lost to Young.

“Sometimes I think: if only I had stopped in Rotterdam,” says Van Barneveld, who has to get used to his new life, but does feel that stopping was the right decision in the end.

“After 35 years I no longer belong to an organization and I have to draw my own plan. Darts was my great love, but in the end stopping is the right choice. I no longer won tournaments and I am not someone who can handle it.”

Van Barneveld will play with the Kings of Darts in Den Bosch (January 24), Enschede (January 26) and Groningen (January 28) later this month and will say goodbye on February 8 in the AFAS Live.

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