Perhaps you have caught some of the darts World Championship over the past few days. Perhaps you have curled your lips and refused to watch - after all, darts has taken a steep plunge downmarket in recent years. And perhaps you have watched and wondered: how can anyone call this a sport when even overweight men are good at it?
If so, you have missed the point. The prevalence of the overweight is not proof that darts is unathletic. That so many of the sport's best players have the same body plan suggests very strongly that the sport has, by the ruthless processes of natural selection, come up with the ideal physique. It cannot be coincidence; we must conclude that the top players are not good in spite of being overweight, they are good partly because they are overweight.
Leading darts players tend to be broad-shouldered, burly, thick of forearm, shortish in the arm, with plenty of weight about belly and bum. This ballast helps them to keep a perfect balance while leaning forward at a steep angle.
The art of darts is in perfect stillness of everything save the forearm of the throwing arm: the big frame, anchored to the ground by adipose tissue, makes this possible on a consistent, endlessly repeatable basis. Watch Phil Taylor. When he throws a dart, nothing moves but his right forearm and an eyebrow.
As marathon running produces skinny men who have to run round in the shower to get wet, as weightlifting produces short-levered men with mighty torsos, as basketball produces skyscraping giants, so darts produces its generously fleshed champions. It's called survival of the fittest. That's not a joke, by the way. Fit doesn't mean strong or healthy, it means suitable. As evolution makes gazelles fast and elephants big, so the processes of sport bring us muscle-popping sprinters, etiolated high jumpers, gigantic shot putters - and tubby darts players. It is not an accident, it is the pursuit of excellence.
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