MY WIFE SAVED MY LIFE... TWICE
Robert Thornton battled booze and a bout of pneumonia with Christine’s help and she will be at his side as he looks to make a mark at Ally Pally
Stepping up to the oche, Robert thornton could not concentrate. His playing CV told him he was one of the best in the world at his craft. His eyes told him something different. He could barely focus on the dartboard.
in 2016, Ardrossan-born thornton had just participated in his third premier League and was a year removed from beating world no1 Michael van gerwen in the World grand prix final.
But his crippling battle with alcoholism had reached a nadir. As he began drinking ‘five or six bottles of Southern Comfort a week’, his wife, Christine, told him enough was enough.
‘i’d be sitting with a drink at seven o’clock in the morning,’ he says looking back, preparing to enter his 11th pDC World Championship. ‘it got to the habit where i didn’t realise what time it was, i’d just be pouring myself a drink anyway.
‘One day my wife put the lot down the sink and said it was either her and the darts, or the drink. it just stopped there and then. When you’re younger, nothing prepares you for the levels of alcohol you can take in during one day playing darts — and still keeping playing. it’s unbelievable.
‘i thought i could concentrate. But it’s a false sense of concentration — if you end up having too much to drink, you’re not really playing properly.’
Darts remains intrinsically linked to alcohol. A sport born in our pubs — thornton still plays at his Kilwinning local on a Monday night — that allows its players a casual drink while competing and its spectators a whole lot more. it’s all part of its entertainment value.
But stories like these are the consequence.
thornton, now 51 and two years on from his lowest ebb, has not shunned the bottle entirely. But with the pressure and scrutiny on players having dramatically intensified — darts is now the second-most watched sport on Sky after football and tournament prize money has doubled in the space of thornton’s 16-year career — he recognises players have become more self-aware when it comes to drinking.
‘i can regulate what i drink now,’ the now-world no 32 says. ‘i wouldn’t touch a drink in the house, i only drink when i’m playing and i only have one or two now. ‘it’s not the way it used to be 15, 20 years ago but you’ve got a lot of young boys coming through now that don’t drink. ‘they’re managing to play without drinks so you’ve got to slow yourself down. they can play all day. ‘You need a drink — it’s a nervesettler. there’s a lot of players out there that, if you were to ban drinking, they wouldn’t be able to play. it’s absolutely nuts.’ Clearing out the drinks cupboard was not the first time Christine had saved her husband’s life. in 2012, thornton arrived back from a trip to Canada having contracted pneumonia. One morning his airwaves seized up, stopping him from breathing, and it was his wife’s quick thinking that proved crucial.
‘i was just sitting in the house when i had a coughing fit,’ says thornton. ‘i’d had a cold, it worsened on the way back and by the time i got home they were giving me injections for blood clots, stuck me straight on iV drips.
‘it was scary, i couldn’t breathe — my wife saved my life, putting me on a nebuliser and that opened up my airwaves.’
thornton returned to the game just six months later, but with his powers severely curtailed by the illness, found himself a 250-1 shot for the 2012 UK Open.
Casting aside all logic — not to mention medical science — he stormed to the title, sweeping aside phil taylor 11-5 in the final.
As thornton speaks, it becomes increasingly clear that Christine is more than just his partner.
Her guiding influence has shaped his entire life.
She’s the one who convinced him to take up darts again in 2002, having had two decades away to raise his children — ‘she was fed up of me practising in the house and sent me to the pub to play’.
She’ll be his coach in the crowd at the Alexandra palace this month — ‘she’s already egging me on, she shouts out my finishes for me, shouts at me when i’m taking my foot off the pedal’.
And she guided him through the grief of losing his mother — ‘every step of the way’.
increasingly, too, thornton must rely on Christine while touring on the darts circuit.
While the rise of professionalism may be forcing him and others to steer clear of excessive drinking, it has also put up barriers between players, forcing them to become more guarded, more one-dimensional in their pursuit of booming prize money.
thornton and Christine are now limited to text messages and phone calls when on the professional circuit due to her battle with diabetes, but he remains eternally grateful just to hear her voice.
‘Before my wife took ill she travelled everywhere with me. then, when it’s just you at the end of the day, it’s very lonely. it’s one of the things you have to go through, doing this kind of job.
‘At night it’s just you, you don’t really see (other players) at night time. the sport’s too professional now, you don’t go out. As soon as the game’s finished you know you’ve got another match the next day. You go back to the hotel, have something to eat, watch the telly and go to sleep.
‘there’s too much at stake. You’ve got to get back and, if you’re lucky enough to carry a dartboard about with you, you go back and practise.
‘Us players will see each other at the venue, say hello and have a chat. You’re good friends before, mortal enemies when you’re on there and friends when you come off again.’