The darts world championship is experiencing an unprecedented walk-on whirl: When the German Florian Hempel enters the stage at “Ally Pally” on Friday evening, the wrong entrance music sounds. The Cologne band Brings is replaced by Elton John. After initial uncertainty, Hempel still wins his game.
When Florian Hempel is ready for his walk-on at the Alexandra Palace late on Friday evening, he already notices “that something is going wrong”. Instead of the beat of “Kölsche Jung” by Brings, “Rocket Man” by Elton John suddenly sounds from the sound boxes in the London hall. The Darts World Cup has its first mini excitement this year.
For the second time in his career, Florian Hempel has qualified for the most important tournament in darts. Last year, on his debut, he put in a sensational run up to the third round. For every game he came on stage with the song of the Cologne dialect band.
“I don’t know what happened either,” Hempel said after his hard-fought 3-2 win in the opening game against Englishman Keegan Brown on “Sport 1”. The native of Cologne announced that he would seek a conversation with those responsible for the professional darts organization PDC. “To change that for the next game.”
The 32-year-old ex-handball player also admits after the game that the walk-on chaos was still on his mind in the early moments of the game. “It made me nervous because the walk-on is extremely important for us.” And then this: cult song “Rocket Man” from 1972 instead of the eternally young classic “Kölsche Jung” from 2013.
Speculations quickly run rampant: did the PDC arbitrarily change the German’s walk-on song? As is well known, the organizer is not particularly fond of walk-in music with non-English lyrics because the predominantly British audience finds it difficult to sing along.
The PDC clarified that night: It was a playback error that will definitely be changed again for the second game. PDC media boss Dave Allen assured him that, says Hempel in the “Dazn” interview. “I don’t know how the mistake happened either.”
One day later, the native of Dessau will no longer be so concerned: The joy of the narrow victory against his strong English opponent should now outweigh the worries. This is the only way he still has the chance to go on the “Ally Pally” stage to “Kölsche Jung” again this year. On Thursday evening, Hempel meets world number five Luke Humphries.