June 1, 2006
Column 12
Park City, Utah
While the time-worn debate over whether darts is a “sport” or a “game” will probably go on indefinitely, in the year 2002 anyway darts has an opportunity to make its way near to the very center of where — at least in my opinion — it rightfully ought to be.
Just thirty minutes east of Salt Lake City is an old gold mining town called Park City. Now a fashionable ski resort and sometimes home to the rich and famous, Park City is dotted with chalets owned by the likes of Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams and Sharon Stone.
Each January the place bustles as Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival takes center stage. During the season celebrities partake of the nightlife along Main Street after challenging some of the best ski slopes to be found in North America. In the off-season the area is just as packed as tourists swat little white balls around golf courses designed by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Smack in the center of all of this at the Olympic Pub in the Olympic Hotel (1895 Sidewinder Drive) are a couple of dart boards. And smack in the center of all this they will still be when in 2002 the Winter Olympics and some of the best atheletes in the world arrive in town. What an opportunity!
The Olympic Pub is the ideal venue for a little after hours competition. A perfect site to pit some of the most skilled athletes of the world against people such as you and me — the lowly darters who have been relegated to just “playing a game” in relative obscurity, arguably, because our so-called “game” is often “played” in the corner of a smoke-filled room instead of on the powder of a mountain in someplace called Lake Placid or along a fairway in someplace called Augusta.
Is darts a sport or a game? I say settle the question, once and for all, at the Olympic Pub in Park City, Utah. There are two Nodor boards hung in a special nook off to the left side of the bar. Deep in the heart of Mormon country, smoking is banned in the place and the local brew (Wasatch Ale) is so bitter the odds are the room will also be dry. What better environment for aworld-class sporting event!
In the year 2002 the odds are that more than a handful of gold medal hopefuls are going to wind their way into the Olympic Pub. And the way I figure it — if they meet up with many of those you have read this far — there ain’t a chance in hell that they are going to find their way out with a gold medal around their neck.
Darts just a game…
Bull!
From the Field,
Dartoid
