Raymond van Barneveld announces retirement from darts with immediate effect
Written by News on 29/03/2019
Raymond van Barneveld has announced his retirement from darts with immediate effect.
The Dutchman was due to retire from the sport after the PDC World Championships at the end of the year, but has brought forward his departure after his exit from the Premier League of Darts.
Barney was beaten 7-1 by fellow Dutchman Michael van Gerwen on Thursday in Rotterdam, and following his defeat he told Sky Sports: “I’ve made a decision – I’m done now. I don’t want the pain anymore.
“It’s good to see that everyone loves you, but they don’t have one single clue what I’m going through. It’s pain every single week for the last three or four years.
“There’s never a feeling of winning the World Cup with Michael, feeling like ‘hey Ray, we’re back’.
“Two weeks I got in a final and still got beat by Adrian Lewis. There’s no light. I try, I try, I try; but I’m OK with this decision. I’m relieved.”
Van Barneveld, who won five world titles during an illustrious 32-year career, said he felt “ashamed” of his performances in his native Netherlands this week.
His thrashing at the hands of Van Gerwen followed a 7-1 reverse to Daryl Gurney on Wednesday, and van Barneveld said: “Rotterdam is always good to me, but I hit nothing.
“Yesterday I played really bad against Daryl. Today I knew I was in relegation. I felt ashamed. Five-times world champion and I’m thinking, ‘do I deserve this? I don’t think so’.
“But it is reality. I don’t have the energy to start from scratch again. I’m not good enough.
“I can say to myself, ‘OK Ray, take some time out’. But there is no time because at the end of the year we want to go to the World Championships. I can’t go back from scratch because I’m suffering every single week.”
Michael van Gerwen, who was Barney’s companion for three of his four World Cup of Darts titles, took to Twitter to say: “Great two nights for myself in Rotterdam but the moment was about Raymond.
“Happy I kept my focus and got the job done. But now I like to say thank you to Raymond for everything he did for Dutch darts.”
Van Barneveld will go down in history as one of the most successful players of his generation. He won four BDO World Championship titles before switching to the PDC in 2006.
He added another world title to his collection in 2007, and also won the Grand Slam of Darts in 2012 and the Premier League of Darts in 2014.
(c) Sky News 2019: Raymond van Barneveld announces retirement from darts with immediate effect
