The Darts World 50

Darts World often demonstrated our games’ knack for being ahead of the curve in many popular movements. Back in 1984, Terry Swain was demonstrating just how successful players with disabilities could be!

The word inclusivity is being deployed almost constantly in today’s sporting culture. To ensure the success of individuals with disabilities in many different sports and at all levels, it is incumbent on all involved to ensure that it is given more than just lip service.

The remarkable Terry Swain designed his own standing braces in order to be able to play ‘mainstream’ darts events as far back as 1984. It appears he was pretty good at it as well. Terry’s laudable aims of demonstrating what could be achieved, and then exhibiting the game to others in similar circumstances, seem truly outstanding.

The American thrower credited darts with ‘getting him on his feet’ and wished to share it with others.

Some of the other questions in the piece seem out of place today, we all now that wheelchair players can indeed ‘toe the oche’ and indeed players with many different disabilities can enjoy and compete alongside all other players.

Darts World wonders if any of our North American readers or even Terry himself could update us on how he progressed with his aims, both inside and outside the competitive game. (editor@dartsworld.com or @Darts_World).

Very few publications can lay claim to being “The Official Voice” of their sport. But then not many are almost 50 years old and have coexisted side by side with the object of their affection throughout the swings and roundabouts of two golden eras and at least one near collapse.

In the early 1970s, a handful of ingredients were coming together to form the recipe for the massive success of the hitherto lesser-known pub game. Darts World Magazine was one of those ingredients.

Editor, proprietor, and instigator, Tony Wood, welcomed readers to the new Darts World magazine for our November/December 1972 debut (Issue 1). The ingredients mentioned above could all be seen within those first 36 pages and then in every issue that followed.

DW has chronicled the ups and downs, the major events, and the minutiae while championing the game at every opportunity.

The Darts World 50 offers 50 highlights selected direct from our pages during what must now be thought of as the ‘Golden Age/s of Darts’.