At the end of the second set of the final of the World Darts Championship, the biggest game in one of the biggest indoor sports in the world, Luke Littler calmly strolled off stage, gave his family a wry, knowing smile and rubbed his hands together like he had the prescient foresight of the beating he was about to dish out.

The man, no, the boy that 3,000 people had crammed inside London’s Alexandra Palace to see produce history, plus millions more watching at home and in pubs around the UK and the world, was doing it not just with dispassionate ease, or with flamboyant style, but with disdainful relish.

Darts finals have been won more handsomely — the sport’s all-time great Phil Taylor dished out three 7-0 whitewashes in his heyday — but not like this. Never like this.

Luke Littler is 17. He has facial hair that men many years his senior yearn to grow and in a sport that has its history rooted in pubs, Littler is not yet able to drink alcohol in one.

And yet he already carries the bravado and stage persona of someone ready to lead the sport down roads it has never visited before, which is exactly what he is already doing.

Littler has already helped push darts further towards the mainstream in the UK, with viewing figures on Sky Sports, a subscription service, up almost 200 per cent for some tournaments in 2024, following record numbers of 4.8 million for last year’s final (the most watched non-football event in the broadcaster’s history), which a then-16-year-old Littler lost to Luke Humphries.

Now, by becoming world champion, he has earned the right to enter the pantheon of youthful sporting legends. Sure, Pele was good with a football at 17, but could he throw three treble-20s at a red, green and black board from almost two-and-a-half metres away?

Serena Williams won the US Open at 17, Ian Thorpe was the same age when he won Olympic gold in the pool, Sachin Tendulkar was 16 when he made his India debut and snooker magician Ronnie O’Sullivan was 17 when he won the UK Championship. What sets Littler apart in his particular field is that he has become the greatest current player in the world in the entire sport before he has become an adult.

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Why is he so good? Is it natural talent? Well, he’s been playing darts since his dad bought him a magnetic dart board from the pound shop when he was 18 months old. He’s not old enough to vote, but he’s basically been practising for this moment almost his entire, short life.

And it’s not all youthful exuberance and freshness, either. Littler had mental scars from losing last year’s final despite being 4-2 up (he watched it back just hours before Friday’s match to recap what went wrong), but he was relentless and merciless in his pursuit of victory here in north London, bulldozing into a 4-0 lead against one of the greatest players to ever chuck an arrow, three-time champion Michael van Gerwen.

The youngster later said he felt nervous after taking that early lead, but his actions in obliterating one of the best players in the world suggested the exact opposite.

He unyieldingly hammered the treble bed like he was using a dart-sized jackhammer, ploughing perfect tiny holes in the helpless board as he sculpted his journey to greatness.

With the throwing hands of a sporting artist, Littler smiled and waved to the crowd, talking to them and himself throughout, in complete control of his own destiny.

Littler surpassed Van Gerwen’s record as the youngest darts world champion in history (James Fearn/Getty Images)

He didn’t just try to win, he tried to produce darts from the Gods while he was at it. He kept leaving himself on 170, darts’ biggest outshot to win a leg, which happened too frequently to not be deliberate. Darts players normally look pained when they miss a nine-darter (i.e. darting perfection of winning a leg with the smallest possible number of throws), but Littler just gave a nonchalant shrug when he missed the seventh dart like he knew he would get another chance.

A powerless Van Gerwen, the winner of 157 PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) titles, could only scowl and grimace like Dick Dastardly in a lime green shirt.

The Dutchman was once the youngest world champion, aged 24. The symbolism of a weighty dart-shaped baton being passed to the next generation here was irresistible.

Van Gerwen rallied, as champions do, clinging to Littler’s coattails as they swapped the next six sets, but it was never going to be enough in front of a deliriously partisan crowd, drunk on booze and throwing. He may give off the appearance of a combination of Bond villains, part Blofeld with his shiny bald head, part Jaws with a grille across his chops, but he could only play the bad guy for so long against a tidal wave of trebles and tons.

Littler was just too good. Whenever Van Gerwen came up for air, the teenager pushed him back underwater with one hand and hit double 10 with the other.

“Wow… wow,” Littler said to himself as he welled up having just hit double 16 to win 7-3, confirm the title and become £500,000 ($621,056 at current conversion rates) richer. He muttered “I can’t believe it” three times in his immediate post-match interview.

“At 2-0 up, I started getting nervous, but I said to myself, ‘Just relax’.

“That first game against Ryan Meikle, it’s the game that really mattered.”

Littler cried on stage after that second-round victory over Meikle before Christmas. He broke down, couldn’t finish an interview, left the stage and went to give his mum a hug.

On the train journey down to London earlier that day, he couldn’t wait for the match to start, but when he threw his first dart he basically, paraphrasing his own words, bottled it.

“I’ve never felt anything like that,” he later said after composing himself. “It was a weird feeling… it’s the biggest stage out there. It was probably the toughest game I’ve played.”

To prove his otherworldly nature, he had somehow produced the greatest set of darts ever seen in the history of the world championships at the end of that “toughest” match, averaging more than 140, but yes, he had started it like a glorified pub player by his own incredibly high standards.

“I’m thinking to myself; ‘What are you doing? Just relax’,” Littler said.

Littler during his walk out for the final against Michael van Gerwen at Alexandra Palace (James Fearn/Getty Images)

It’s no wonder, what with the enormous pressure on his young shoulders at being the favourite to lift the title aged just 17, a normal kid from Runcorn, a small town near Liverpool in the north-west of England, who eats kebabs and likes football.

Thereafter, throughout almost the whole tournament, he was imperious, reflecting the form that saw him rise from 164th to fourth in the world rankings last year.

Despite the unimaginable increase in money, fame, popularity and exposure, the 1.5 million Instagram followers, the endless television appearances and mixing it with Max Verstappen or his heroes at Manchester United, he stayed focused, winning 10 PDC titles, the Premier League, Grand Slam and World Series finals, plus hitting four perfect nine-darters along the way and earning more than £1million ($1.2m) in prize money.

He was the most searched athlete of the year on Google and the runner-up in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

“Littler has captivated people because he’s relatable,” Sky Sports darts presenter Emma Paton told The Athletic earlier in the tournament. “He’s taken the sport to different places… Darts has never had this exposure before. It’s not even because of what he’s done in the sport, which has been ridiculous by the way, but it’s the impact he’s had on it.

“Compared to a lot of other sportspeople, darts players are refreshingly honest and are basically just being themselves and Luke is no different. He’s just a kid at the end of the day.

“People have asked me, ‘What’s it like speaking to Luke Littler? It doesn’t seem like he has loads to say’. I’m like, ‘He’s just very chilled out, he doesn’t really care that much, he’s just a 17-year-old kid’.”

Darts obsessive Littler plays exactly like that, like a kid having fun on the stage, ticking off his own personal bucket list of darting dreams.

He has an uncanny ability to detach himself completely from the enormity of the event, chat to the crowd, ignore his opponent and just play his own game, the old sporting cliche.

He relishes showing off the skills he’s honed over years of practice, expanding on the possibilities and limits that we thought the sport previously had. He tries irregular setup shots, he hits double-doubles or two bullseyes. He essentially takes the practice board to the world stage.

And then, when he needs to, a steely glint of determination emanates from his eyes and an unforgiving rhythm of 180s ensues. He can turn it on like few in the sport ever have before.

An emotional Littler reacts after winning the PDC World Championship (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

“I sometimes say, every 17 years a star gets born,” a humbled Van Gerwen said. “He’s one of them… Every chance he got, every moment he had to hurt me, he did it.”

World champion, famous, a millionaire. What on earth next, other than impending adulthood?

“I just want to add to it, maybe get a few more,” Littler said. “If I want the 16 (Taylor’s record of world titles), then I’m sure I could possibly achieve it.

“I’ve been doing this since 18 months old on a magnetic board wearing a nappy.

“When I’d say to my mates I’ve got a darts competition, they’d be like, ‘Darts?!’ ‘Yeah, darts, have you not seen it?’”

They’re all seeing it now, thanks to an unassuming 17-year-old lad who can throw arrows like few ever have before.

(Top photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

Celine Haidar dances on the upper deck of a crimson open-top bus. Around the 19-year-old midfielder, team-mates sing. A flag bearing the Beirut Football Academy (BFA) crest sways to an undirected melody of car horns, drums and mini trumpets.

It is August 10, 2024. Celine’s BFA team are celebrating their first Lebanese Women’s Football League title, achieved in a flawless, unbeaten season which reached its climax earlier that day.

But there are other noises too — the hum of Israeli fighter jets crawling above and the echo of bombs — while around the bus piles of concrete and twisted metal poke upwards into the sky.

Here, in Lebanon’s capital, life has been delineated by similar sounds and sights of conflict for decades. But they have been ever-present since Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia based across southern Lebanon, began attacking Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas — the Palestinian militant group in Gaza that led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

But on August 10, Celine and her team-mates choose to make their own noise. In the car behind them, Celine’s father, Abbas, honks the horn with unbridled pride, prompting the cars behind to follow suit.

“We had been running from the bombing, the war,” Abbas tells The Athletic from Beirut via video call, with the help of a translator. “But they had a final to play. I told Celine I wanted to be there, despite the sirens, because they chose to play despite the sirens. They won, and we marched in Beirut, with joy and horns and pride.”

In a city accustomed to the wail of air raid sirens, it was a rare moment of rhapsody. Four months later, it would become an emotional buoy from which to cling.

Across October and November 2024, Israel ramped up its pursuit of Hezbollah agents. Civilians, including Celine and her family, evacuated Beirut’s suburbs and sought refuge in Baakline, a village in the Chouf Mountains outside the capital. On November 15, during a lull in the shelling, Celine returned to Beirut to train and work. The following day, Israel issued an evacuation order. While mounting her motorcycle preparing to leave, Celine was struck on the right side of her head by a piece of shrapnel.

Footage of the incident was shared on social media. In it, Celine can be seen wearing white trousers, white trainers and a light green jacket. She lies on a floor of amber tiles, surrounded by still-settling rubble. There is blood on her face. Her long light brown hair spools into a swelling red puddle around her. A man’s desperate screams fill the space.

After two months, Celine underwent throat surgery on December 20 and, finally, is out of a coma. But she cannot move or speak and she rarely registers sounds around her.

News of the incident travelled around the globe, igniting outrage and sorrow. Celine, a burgeoning star with Lebanon’s national team, became a symbol of the war’s destruction.

For her parents, Abbas and Saana, there is only anguish. They know they are not unique in this setting. More than 3,700 have been killed and 16,000 injured in Lebanon since 2023, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The conflict is the country’s deadliest in three decades. According to New York Times reporting, it has displaced more than one million people, crippled the economy and left schools, farms, businesses and hospitals in ruins. In Israel, dozens living in frontline communities in the north near the Lebanese border have been killed, with more than 60,000 civilians uprooted. A 60-day ceasefire, agreed in late November, is into its final 30 days.

“We’ve spent all our lives holding our children, hiding them from war, protecting them,” says Abbas, who has witnessed conflict throughout his life in Lebanon.

“We paid a big war tax, a blood tax for our daughters. So, what do we do? What did we do wrong? We only live to raise our children, to make their dreams come true. Celine was beginning her life, building step by step with football. This injury cut off her journey. I hope this experience is passed on.”

For those who know Celine, two things repeatedly come to mind: her irrepressible smile and her incorrigible fight.

“When we think of Celine, the first thing that comes to mind is the life she brought,” says Saana. “Her spirit, her humour, her toughness, her stubbornness. We miss how she fills the house.”

The youngest of three children, Celine followed a direction only she knew, wearing the clothes and pursuing the hobbies she wanted. While devoutly religious, her zeal for life sometimes grated against Lebanon’s historic conservatism, particularly as she pursued football, a traditionally male enterprise (the nation has only one women’s league, with teams regularly folding).

Yet neither Abbas nor Saana felt they should, or could, stand in her way.

“Celine is Celine, she wants her life as she wants it,” says Abbas. “She can take what she wants and do what she wants. Yes, I give her this opportunity, as I don’t see a difference between girls and boys, but she does not need to take it from me. She did what she wanted with the strength of her personality.”

What Celine wanted most was football. She idolises Cristiano Ronaldo, whose Manchester United shirt remains draped over a chair in her bedroom. Days were spent on fields, honing her trade with the local boys. Her visions were grand: make the Lebanese national team, perhaps move to the United States, eventually open an academy.

At 17, shortly after helping Lebanon’s Under-18s to glory in the West Asian Cup — just the second time in the team’s history they achieved the feat — Celine was offered to BFA after her previous side, SC Safa, was dismantled. Head coach Samer Barbary initially declined the opportunity. He had midfielders, good ones. And a reputation preceded Celine.

“I’m a very strict coach. I’d heard she was stubborn,” Barbary says, talking via video call in December. “I didn’t think we’d get along.”

Celine, predictably, disagreed.

“She texted me,” Barbary says, a smile sneaking across his face. “‘Coach, I hear you don’t want me but I want to play so you’ll have to take me’. I said, ‘Fine, training is at 6:45 tonight.’ And we began this beautiful journey together.”

In her first two seasons with BFA, Celine helped the club win the under-19 title and a first senior league championship in the 2023-24 season, making 33 top-flight appearances in total.

Celine Haidar (on a team-mate’s shoulders, centre left) celebrates winning the under-19 title in 2023 (Samer Barbary/Beirut Football Academy)

The increasing consistency of her performances, married with her vision and insatiable aggression, earned her a new reputation as one of Lebanon’s best central midfielders, a “prodigy” according to Barbary. Despite her age, she was a pillar of BFA, wearing the captain’s armband for part of the title-winning campaign.

“They called her ‘Little Captain’, because she was smaller than all of them (about 5ft 5ins, 165cm) but she could lead,” Saana says, lifting her chin high as tears prickle her eyes.

Four times Celine was called into the senior Lebanon national team. With a fair wind, her course was unstoppable: a senior cap, a move abroad, maybe a major tournament.

The day Barbary speaks with The Athletic in late November, Celine should be attending the second day of a coaching course. For Barbary, it is another reminder of how abruptly life has been altered.

“She just needed to keep going,” Barbary says, an ache creeping into his voice. “We were planning on doing this. She was always smiling, always laughing. I just hope she gets that smile back. And she will be my captain again. We are waiting for her to come back to life, for her to be normal or to live a normal life as much as she can. Because they killed her dream.”

Abbas and Saana never feared their daughter’s spirit might cause her problems. “The only thing we were afraid of for her was war,” Abbas says.

Conflict was never far away in Lebanon, but in October 2023 their fears grew. Barbary rattles off a list of moments that will not leave him. A day in September when players and coaches hit the floor as Israel continued its two-week offensive targeting Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Lebanon’s militant Shia Islamist movement (Israel later confirmed his assassination). A day in November when an under-8s and under-12s session was interrupted by bombs.

“The kids began laughing,” Barbary says. “They had become used to the sound. We don’t want kids to get used to the sound.”

The Lebanese Football Association (LFA) postponed all football matches in its affiliated tournaments in late September. But Celine refused to allow the war to disrupt her trajectory. Between evacuation notices, she left the mountains to train in what was considered a safe corner of the capital. Sirens signalled her return to life in the mountains. This was life’s cycle.

But on November 16, the cycle did not repeat. Instead, sirens wailed and Celine’s parents did not hear from her. Saana called Abbas, who was at work, and told him to find her.

“They were 500 metres away from each other (when the bombs began),” says Saana. A friend called, choking out the message that Celine was hurt. Saana asked where Celine was, her way of attempting to ask the question burning in her throat: how hurt?

“That question, you don’t even dare to ask,” Saana says. Tears stain her cheeks.

Saana was told Celine sustained a head injury and was going to Saint George Hospital in Hadath. Saana could not leave Baakline until the shelling stopped. When she finally arrived, she barged into the emergency room where her daughter lay in an induced coma.

“I saw the doctor cutting her hair off,” Saana says. “I saw her face. It was all blood. She had a gash in her head. They were cutting into it, to save her.”

Bombs continued to fall, eventually striking the hospital. Celine was moved to Saint George Hospital University Medical Center in Achrafieh following a conversation between the president of the BFA and the Lebanese health minister. Another surgery was required to stabilise her condition, before breathing tubes and prayers were assembled around her.

“I pray I was the one injured,” Abbas says. “I pray for the pain to return to me instead.”

Barbary, who travels daily to Celine’s bedside, took her BFA team-mates to visit her the following Monday. In the hospital lobby, he held a meeting.

“I told them it’s a situation we cannot erase, so we have to continue fighting,” Barbary says. “Because she doesn’t want anyone to stop. When she comes back, when she wakes up, if she can play, she wants to come back to the team playing. Every day we are training and playing for Celine. This is our objective now. We’ll be waiting for her.”

That week at BFA’s training ground, a poster of Celine was erected above the pitches, a reminder of their mission.

The Celine banner is prominent as the players train (Samer Barbary/Beirut Football Academy)

Days are divided into a rota, Abbas, Saana and her elder sister Carole taking shifts to ensure Celine is never alone (Celine’s elder brother works in Africa). Coaches and friends flitter in and out. They check her temperature. They hold her hand. They speak to her about life, about football, about anything.

“I dedicate my life to Celine,” says Abbas, who no longer goes to work. “All day, I am next to her at the hospital. All my effort in my life is for her, so that she recovers.”

In the scant hours he and Saana are home, sleep does not come.

On occasion, one of Celine’s eyes will open. Her hand will move. But progress is staggered. Complications with the sodium in her blood led to early issues. Sustenance arrived via a feeding tube. One month after the injury, the oxygen machine was removed. Days later, Celine was forced to undergo an emergency tracheostomy, a surgical procedure that creates an opening in the neck to aid breathing.

The refrain is the same among friends and families: Celine is a fighter. But a full recovery requires medical procedures unavailable in Lebanon’s limited healthcare system, leaving her family at the mercy of charity.

“We are hoping someone can read this and help us,” Saana says. “Because we need, God willing, help.”

Celine’s story, with the graphic video of her injury and its dissemination on social media, grabbed global headlines.

Lili Iskandar, a Lebanon national team-mate who plays for Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad, suggests the reason this particular story gained such attention is Celine’s ubiquity: a young person with a life ahead of her.

“When I heard what happened, I thought, I can be her. Anyone can be her,” says Iskandar. “My sister (who lives in Lebanon) sends me texts, saying, ‘I don’t want to die. I’m so scared.’ People ask me in Saudi, why don’t my family join me? The intention is nice, but why is the question always about us leaving our home? Why is the question not about the war leaving us?”

The news of the 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, agreed 10 days after Celine’s injury, is welcomed, particularly as Lebanon continues to grapple with a prolonged economic crisis exacerbated by war, political stagnation and the Covid-19 pandemic. But the truce is fragile.

Celine’s family recognise the temptation for some to paint their daughter as a symbol. But they want her to be recognised as Celine: their headstrong little girl who loves football, who “rose from nothing” to wear the Lebanese crest, who loves Ronaldo and Real Madrid, who travels to Egyptian beaches to feel the ocean run between her toes, whose grey long-haired cat still saunters into her room searching for her. She is their youngest child who moved them to a new home to keep them safe during the war, despite the job of protector technically belonging to them.

In this light, they say, Celine’s story cannot be written as a condition of war but a tragedy of it.

“I want to send a message to all the people who love peace and sports,” says Abbas. “Wars are pure losses for all parties. I hope there won’t be wars. Celine had big ambition. This ambition was killed. But let’s use this moment to give the message that it doesn’t matter your religion, your ethnicity. We’re all human beings. We deserve to have our dreams.”

(Photos: Samer Barbary/Beirut Football Academy; design: Eamonn Dalton)