Stefan Bellmont is the first Swiss player to start at the World Darts Championships in London. With his appearance at the famous Alexandra Palace, the man from Cham has fulfilled a dream that he wants to live out for as long as possible.
13.12.2024, 04:30
13.12.2024, 07:14
SDA
The door to "Belli's Darts House" is open. It's a chilly afternoon in early December when Stefan Bellmont invites people into his realm in an industrial area of Cham. It's been a good three months since the 35-year-old opened his own darts venue in the basement of a solar technology company, fulfilling a long-cherished dream.
Bellmont waves in greeting. He is on the phone and walks between tables and dartboards. The man from Cham is discussing an article that will appear about him at some point. Actually, he says later, he doesn't really like doing things with the media. "I'd prefer to just play darts. But it's just part of the job."
The reason why the trained chef has become the focus of media attention can be illustrated by a disc that has been given a very special place in the restaurant to the left of the entrance. It looks like any other dartboard hanging on the right-hand wall. With fields in black, red, green and white, surrounded by numbers from 1 to 20.
But three holes in the sisal dartboard, which can still be guessed at, have a very special meaning for Stefan Bellmont. He puts an arrow in the triple 20, one in the single 14 and one in the middle, in the bullseye. Actually, Bellmont says with a laugh, he had wanted to hit the triple 14 and then finish off with a hit into the double 11. But when his second dart missed the target by millimetres, he changed his mind and made darts history with his throw into the middle of the target, making himself the first Swiss World Championship participant.
Strong nerves in Kalkar
Just under a month ago, Bellmont played a qualifying tournament for the World Championship in Kalkar in north-west Germany near the Dutch border. 92 darts players from Europe tried to win the tournament to secure the only available ticket for the World Championship in the famous Alexandra Palace in London, where the World Champion will be crowned between December 15 and January 3.
The Zug native has already tried four times to play his way onto the biggest stage possible for a darts player. Last year he failed in the semi-finals. But this time the darts flew in his favor until the very end. Although there were some tricky moments to overcome in the seven rounds. First of all in the final, when Dutchman Jimmy van Schie had two match darts but missed them. And of course in the decisive 13th leg, when Bellmont's opponent still had 58 points left and the player from central Switzerland was practically forced to check out his remaining 124 points and end the match. Which he did with the aforementioned combination of triple 20, 14 and bullseye.
"I always believed in myself," says Bellmont. "It makes me very proud that everything worked out so perfectly."
Rituals for focus
Like so many darts careers, Stefan Bellmont's also began in a pub. When he was working as a chef after his apprenticeship, he sometimes met up with colleagues in a bar in Steinhausen after work. At some point, he also throws a few darts at one of the e-dart boxes set up there. As he hits well, he is soon asked if he would like to be part of a team and train regularly.
Ten years ago, he also started throwing steel darts. As he has to add up the points himself with this variant of darts, he had reservations for a long time. "Today I can only laugh about it," says Bellmont, who practices up to five hours a day thanks to the infrastructure in his restaurant.
The leisurely pastime has long since become a passion. In addition to the sessions at the board, Bellmont also regularly talks to a mental coach. After all, the head plays just as important a role in darts as the throwing arm. The Zug native talks about his first tournament abroad, which could be followed live on the internet. At the time, he wasn't ready in his head. The thought that everyone would see the same thing if he only threw 60 or 45 points in one shot blocked him.
He now has strategies at the ready to help him keep his focus. Rituals such as washing his hands before a game give him confidence. And enable him to cause a stir on the international stage. He has won two Challenge Tour tournaments, and thanks to consistently good performances in this second most important tournament series of the World Darts Association PDC, he was also able to start a total of 22 times on the Pro Tour, the most important tournament series, this year.
Gotthard at the "Ally Pally"
This was also the case on April 9 in Leicester. And the trip to the English East Midlands was to be a memorable one. With Michael Smith in the second round and Rob Cross in the fourth, the 2023 and 2018 world champions had to congratulate Stefan Bellmont on his victory.
Until he qualified for the World Championship, these had been the biggest successes in the career of the 2022 Swiss champion and proof that the training for which he gave up his part-time job in the logistics of an online darts store was also paying off in terms of results. But now, as a World Championship participant, Bellmont has been able to fulfill another dream that he had envisaged ten years ago just for fun.
Back then, he was a spectator at the semi-finals in London and told his companions that the next time he came here, he would be on the stage. At around 9 p.m. on Sunday, Gotthard's "Lift U Up" will be the first time a Swiss band's warm-up song will blast through the "Ally Pally" and animate the celebrating fans.
In the first round, Bellmont, the world number 124, will face Dutchman Jermaine Wattimena (36). Should he prevail, he would face a major challenge on Monday in the form of James Wade (16). But Stefan Bellmont is not thinking that far ahead. Nor is he thinking about whether he would take the disc home again if he won. He says: "I'm really looking forward to this world championship experience. I have nothing to lose."
