It’s long been debated that darts (along with snooker) are one of the few sports where age really doesn’t have much of an impact on performance.
In physically demanding sports like football or rugby, there are clearly prime years between the ages of 25-32 where players have reached physical maturity and peak performance.
Going into your mid-30s, players lose some speed, strength and recovery ability.
They don’t deteriorate, it’s marginal losses, but when playing at the highest level these minor decreases make it much more difficult to compete with the best.
** Worth mentioning that through advances in sports science, recovery methodology and individual attitudes to longevity in sport, players are maintaining a high level of performance in later years.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lebron James both being prime examples as they are nearly 40 years of age.
Darts has always had older players that perform well with many winning World Championships at all ages:
- Phil Taylor’s won his last World Championship aged 52
- Peter Wright won a World Championship aged 51 just 3 years ago
- Gerwyn Price retired from professional rugby and then won a World Championship aged 36
- Luke Littler made it to the 2024 World Championship final aged just 16
In recent years though we’ve also seen younger players start to excel in darts with Luke Littler being an obvious example.
The popularity of the game along with federations like the JDC mean that younger players are throwing elite level darts before they’ve even finished their GCSEs!
While we assume that age isn’t a big factor when it comes to darts performance, some statistical analysis has now come out to show that we might be right…
SEE ALSO – Are darts players considered athletes?
Statistical Analysis on Age and Player Performance in Darts
Christopher Kempf (ochepedia on X) has produced some statistical analysis for the PDC looking at whether or not a range of factors affect player performance in darts.
Full analysis can be found on the PDC website here
He looked at 2023-24 Players Championship events and studied a range of factors for comparison.
These factors included dart weights, player ages, averages, 180’s per leg and even ‘home’ advantage/disadvantage to determine if there are any obvious factors that can improve player performance in darts.
There was nothing to say that if you throw a 23g dart you’ll hit more 180’s but the stat we found most interesting was player age.
Related – Are heavy or light darts better?
As we said earlier, it’s always been assumed that age wasn’t a big factor in darts and that you could play at the highest level regardless of age (provided you have the ability).
Well, Ochepedia’s analysis shows that to be correct – at least at the professional level.
Christopher wrote:
“On this topic we can at least observe the performances of players representing a wide range of ages, from the aforementioned teenager Littler to the 60-year-old Steve Beaton. If there was a relationship between age and performance, we could see it.
But the conventional wisdom is correct – young players have no advantage over older players, and vice versa, solely due to their ages.
A linear model plotting two years’ worth of Players Championship averages indicates a miniscule decline of 0.06 points in averages for each additional 10 years of age, with extremely low confidence that any variation in averages could be explained by such a factor.
17-year-olds and 53-year-olds have recorded nearly equivalent averages in the past two years of floor events – the likelihood that a player will average 95 or more in Players Championship events is just as high whether a player is contemplating retirement or finishing their studies.”
Now we know this is a small and specific data set so you can’t take it to be a fact. You can combine it with personal experience though to draw your own conclusions.
My grandad was playing against county league players in his 80’s and professionals in their 50’s like Gary Anderson, Peter Wright and RVB are all still competing for majors at the highest level.
Therefore, you can look at all playing levels and see that age doesn’t impact darts anywhere near to the levels of other sports 🤷🏻♂️
What do you think of this analysis?
Let us know down in the comments below if this confirms your suspicion that age doesn’t matter in darts or do you disagree with it…
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