Big gob

The gym is hardly the place for lardy beer-swilling darts players. Kathleen Morgan lets off some steam

AFTER a tough few lengths in the swimming pool, it's always refreshing to know you can head for a sauna so hot it leaves you gasping. When fatigue makes you lose count of how many lengths you've done - in my case, usually after the third or fourth - what motivates you is the thought of flopping on to a bench and sweating out the day's stresses without even moving. What you don't expect after you then haul yourself from the sauna into a chill-out chair, is to be confronted with something altogether more breathtaking than a wall of heat.

Darts don't belong in gyms, sports centres, or indeed anywhere health isn't just something written in block capitals on the bottom of a fag packet. When I emerged recently from a Glasgow City Council sauna, red-faced and looking for a seat, the last thing I wanted to be confronted with was the belly of a darts player. I was so busy arranging my towel and wondering what it felt like to have a proper bikini line that I hadn't checked what was on the television screen directly in front of me. Instead of some pleasingly mind-numbing pop videos, I was faced with coverage of the darts championships.

Perhaps the logic was that watching an activity associated with large girths, pints and smoke-filled pubs would be reassuring to a roomful of semi-naked people. Instead, anyone with a hint of a beer belly seemed to have headed for the steam room, where waist - and bikini - lines are safely shrouded in vapour.

In Britain, darts lovers are arguing passionately that the pastime should be classed as a sport. Scotland's best dartsman, Bob Taylor, recently conceded that darts is still a drink-orientated game, but insisted: "We've tried to clean up our act. Darts is very different from the sport of ten or 20 years ago."

Even if darts gets so clean it squeaks and makes it to the Olympic Games, it should be banned from health suites, where scoring isn't advisable, spectators aren't welcome and 180 is too hot.

Copyright 2001
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