Before everything that happened, before the desolation and the despair, before life changed for ever, there was a set of darts. Her parents gave them to her at the age of eight, and when she picked them up she felt a rare and powerful contentment. She threw and she threw. She threw her way into the Netherlands youth team. She devoured Raymond van Barneveld games on television. She dreamed of playing professionally, travelling the world, her name on the big screen. She was Noa-Lynn van Leuven, even if nobody called her that yet.
“I just had a feeling with the game,” she says from her home in Heemskerk, just outside Amsterdam. “I like the whole fight around it. I love watching darts, I love playing darts, and even if I wasn’t on the level I am now, I would still love it. I work long days in a kitchen as a chef de partie, and try to practise for an hour every day, so I don’t do much else. I work, I play darts and I sleep.”
The beauty of darts lies in its openness. The players arriving in Blackpool for the World Matchplay – 32 in the main event and the eight who will compete for the women’s trophy next Sunday – have come from all over the world in pursuit of ambition, glory, a career-defining cheque. But they all share a single origin story. You don’t need a set of clubs or a mountain of expensive kit. You don’t need to find a team who will take you on. All you need is three darts. In the purest sense, this is a sport for everyone.
And yet the journey that brought Van Leuven from Heemskerk to Blackpool as one of the world’s top-eight female players was by no means simple or straightforward. Nor is the road that lies ahead. Van Leuven knows that not everybody appreciates her “big glow-up”, as she puts it. Or the fact that she will be the first trans woman to play in a televised Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) tournament. Nevertheless, she wants to speak. “Because,” she says, “now I have the opportunity to tell my story. And not let other people tell it.”
Van Leuven played until she was 17. Darts made her happy, but life did not. The doubts had begun to creep in a few years earlier. “I just wasn’t feeling myself,” she says. “I was always getting bullied. I started exploring the journey when I was 16 or 17. At first I was like: ‘OK, it’s just weird. I’m not trans. I can’t be like that.’ But I was getting more and more unhappy with myself, to a point that I didn’t want to live any more. And that was the moment where I thought: I can go two sides now. I can end it, or I can live as who I want to live.
“My family was really supportive. At first I only told my mum. My sister was next, and after that my father. Meanwhile I was waiting on an appointment at the hospital. Trans healthcare is really decent compared to the UK, but you still have waiting lists of two and a half years before you get your first appointment with a psychologist. I’ve known a few people that were on the list for over three years. I know a few that killed themselves, and I know a lot that are struggling with mental health. So the Netherlands is OK once you transition, but to get to that point: that’s really tough.”
Finally enjoying life again, Van Leuven found herself drawn back to the sport she loved. But it wasn’t immediately clear how she would do so. The Dutch Darts Federation had no rules or guidelines on transgender participation, and so launched a thorough consultation with medical professionals, sports scientists and the World Darts Federation. Then Covid struck, tournaments were shuttered, and the process ground to a halt. Eighteen months passed before Van Leuven was finally cleared to play in women’s tournaments.
The rules as they now stand are unequivocal: trans women are eligible to play in women’s tournaments as long as their passports say they are female, they have been in hormone replacement therapy for over 12 months and their testosterone level is below a certain mark. This is, of course, exactly as it should be. Physical strength, body development, player safety: none of these are remotely an issue in a game where all you really need is a functioning arm and decent eyesight.
Beau Greaves, the current best female player, regularly posts averages of over 100. Fallon Sherrock reached the third round of the world championship in 2020. The only reason the PDC has women-only events is to provide the opportunities and development that female players have historically been denied. The long-term ambition, once the playing field is sufficiently level, is to do away with them entirely.
But, of course, for any trans person trying to make their way in sport, it can never be as simple as this. Van Leuven knew that her return to darts would attract a little noise, perhaps even some hostility. “But I wasn’t expecting this much,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting to be talking to the Guardian or Dutch television. And I didn’t expect it this big from other players.”
Van Leuven realised this was going to be a small problem when she won the Denmark Open in May. “I had a really good feeling,” she remembers. “But that only lasted for a few minutes. After I won the final they had a presentation where the other players came on stage, and that was the moment I knew something was up. Some of the players didn’t want me there. I saw them talking to each other. I don’t mind people complaining. If people don’t agree with the rules, that’s OK with me. But I don’t think you should do it on stage. That kind of ruined the moment for me.”
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The leading female players such as Greaves and Sherrock are fine with her participation, she says. The problem is more with the players she keeps beating. After a mixed 2022, this season has seen Van Leuven make big strides in the Women’s Series, often registering averages in the high 80s, with a late surge putting her in the top-eight qualifiers for the Women’s World Matchplay. She even claimed a shock win over a below-par Greaves in Milton Keynes in May. Nevertheless, she knows people are talking. “A lot of it behind my back, of course,” she says.
“In my opinion, a lot of players see me as a threat. And what’s easier to get rid of your threats than to find weak points? Darts is a mental game. People are always trying to find ways to beat you. And if they can’t beat you on the board, they’re trying to get into your head, or trying to get me banned. Sometimes it’s rough. In the beginning, it was hard not to let it get into my head. But it’s getting easier now. If they really want to get rid of me, they should play better. Practise more. Beat me on the board.”
So to Blackpool in July, one of the temples of darts, where the crowd are warm and knowledgable and the gates to immortality only a few tantalising steps away. Three wins separate Van Leuven from the £10,000 prize, a place in the Grand Slam of Darts and probably a place in December’s World Championship.
More realistically, she thinks her game is still a few years away from professional level. She plays the formidable Greaves in her first-round game and most expect her to lose. Either way, the experience will only help a player who has never previously thrown in front of more than 200 people.
And at its heart, this is really a story about the power of sport. About identity and belonging. The way it builds people, lifts them, gives them meaning. It began with a set of darts and a dream, and perhaps that’s all it ever is.
“I think darts is helping me to be the best of myself,” Van Leuven says. “I get to meet really nice people. I’m seeing parts of the world that I’ve never seen before. Darts has made me who I am. It really brings me back to life.”
