Dart players get the wind up about ‘rotten egg smells’

● Some athletes blame poor performances on the state of the pitch. Others blame it on tactics, or perhaps just a bad day at the office. But blaming your opponent’s flatulence is definitely a new one.

Yet that’s exactly what happened at the grand slam of darts in Wolverhampton, England, with both Gary Anderson and Wesley Harms denying responsibility for the “rotten egg smells”.

Two-time Scottish world champion Anderson, 47, won Friday’s match 10-2 to progress to the quarterfinals, but Dutchman Harms, 34, was quick to explain his substandard performance by accusing Anderson of leaving a “fragrant smell”. He said: “It’ll take me two nights to lose this smell from my nose.”

World number four Anderson was not best pleased by the accusation, saying the smell had definitely come “from the table side” at the venue.

“Every time I walked past there was a waft of rotten eggs so that’s why I was thinking it was him,” he said. “It was bad. It was a stink, then he started to play better and I thought he must have needed to get some wind out.