‘Heavy Metal” Ryan Searle booked his place in his first World Championship semi-final today – even though he cannot see the board properly.
Searle, 38, beat Jonny Clayton 5-2 in the opening match of quarter-final day at the Alexandra Palace and then spoke about his vision which does not extend much beyond six feet.
The oche is 7ft, 9¼ins but Searle, who wears contact lenses, proved nothing is impossible and is now hoping he can become an inspiration for other sufferers of the genetic condition Dominant Optic Atrophy (DOA) which his daughter, Amelia, 9, also has.
Former window cleaner Searle will now face either defending world champion Luke Littler or Krzysztof Ratajski who meet this evening.
And if he cleaned up and went all the way to the one million first prize, what a story it would be. He has guaranteed himself a £200,000 pay-day for reaching the last four but is hoping his impact goes beyond darts.
Searle, who wears contact lenses, said: “I got the diagnosis sort of 18 months ago but I’ve always had bad vision from when I was really young.
“When I was at secondary school, if I used to sit at the back of the class, I couldn’t see the whiteboard so when it came to copying things off the whiteboard my mate used to copy it off the board and I would copy what he was writing.
“When you can’t see very well you just kind of find ways to get through life. If I can be an inspiration to people that can’t see very well then that means a lot to me.
“My daughter, she struggles really bad with her eyesight, her eyesight lasts up to about 6 feet and then it drops off massively after that. Mine’s kind of similar, I wish the dartboard was about 6 feet away.
“We’re doing some fundraising now, I’ve asked a couple of players for some signed shirts and we’ll raffle them off, try and raise some money for them and Viaplay (streaming service) have mentioned it in a few interviews.
“I did an interview with them a little while back and they’ve managed to raise 15,000 euros which is a lot of money and I’ve been in contact with the people that run the charity and they’re over the moon about it.
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“We’ll try and raise as much money as we can for the charity, especially with my daughter suffering like she does with it and that means the world to me.”
Searle revealed how he deals with playing to such a standard where, before he started wearing contacts, sometimes he had to ask the referee what he had scored because of his blurred vision.
He said: “I’ve been to exhibitions in the past where people have come up to me and said their vision in one eye is not as good as the other, what do you do?
“Because it’s my right eye that isn’t as good as the left, so I kind of combat that by standing a bit further to the right to try and get my left eye sort of more dominant than the right. I’ve tried to pass that on to people.
“I wear contacts now, they help a tiny bit but they take a bit of the blurriness away. Normal people when they wear glasses it helps them see further and they can focus more. but with my condition it doesn’t help that.
“I wear glasses to practise, I wear contacts to play, it takes away a little bit of the blurriness but it doesn’t improve my vision.”
