Dimitri Van den Bergh lost a fight with a coffee table and kept 18 months of injury pain secret.
The Belgian star faces Gary Anderson tonight in a first-round cracker at the Winmau World Darts Masters. Van den Bergh is eager for a massive 2025 having revealed he’s suffered wrist injury issues for the past year-and-a-half and kept them quiet having struck disaster doing DIY in a house move.
He explained: “In the summer of 2023 we had found a house. Helping to assemble furniture, carrying the washing machine upstairs, it was a full day of work, The very last thing I had to do was assemble a coffee table. We had to do that upside down, so with the top at the bottom. Screwed everything together and then turned the table over again. And we didn’t choose the smartest way which meant that I had the full weight of the table on my right hand.
“I couldn’t grab the table quickly enough with my left hand and then everything went out of balance, which my right hand couldn’t handle and which caused a crack in my right wrist. Of course it was my throwing hand. I tried to make the move, but there was so much pain going through my hand that it went into spasm and I dropped my dart on the ground at my feet.
“I then spent months working on myself, without us knowing exactly where the pain came from. Until in October, after missing the European Championship, the first time I had more than a week off, I went to a surgical specialist for an MRI.
“That man immediately understood what was wrong. He then treated me, but not with an operation. That would have cost me three months and I don’t have that time as a professional darts player. That simply wasn’t an option.
“We then started looking for alternatives, which resulted in a local injection. That burst the bubble of the cyst and then I was given cortisone. After a week of complete rest, it was much better and I started training for the World Championship.
“There everyone saw that things were going better than the months before. Not yet as they should be, but better. And I’ll take that mindset with me into the new season.”
Remarkably, Van den Bergh still managed to beat Luke Humphries and win the 2024 UK Open Final despite his issue, but, speaking to Nieuwsblad.be, he continued: “I can start this year without feeling any pain. We explicitly chose not to communicate anything about this for a year and a half. Questions were asked about it every now and then, but I always blocked them out.
“I want to be seen as someone who always does his best and there have been comments about that. Criticism is fine with me, but ultimately I know what was wrong. Or rather: with the wrist. The pain is gone now, thanks to various things I have had done.
“From physiotherapy and advice from a surgeon, to dry needling and shockwave therapy. Everything I could do has been done.”