Featured Image Credit: Getty / PDC
Topics: Darts, Luke Humphries
Ryan Smart
Gian van Veen showed how his right hand looked before he defeated Luke Humphries 11-10 to win the European Championship in Dortmund.
The 23-year-old Dutchman, who was Luke Littler's biggest rival on the PDC Development Tour and won the 2024 World Youth Championship, secured his maiden PDC major title on Sunday evening.
He took out a superb 100 checkout to defeat world number one Humphries, who went 3-0 ahead but had this throw broken by Van Veen on four occasions during the rest of the final.
The Dutchman now moves up to world number seven in the PDC rankings, having enjoyed a superb second full season on the main tour.
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He won his first Players Championship event in Leicester earlier this year and has reached two further finals.
He also made it to the quarter-finals of the UK Open and World Matchplay, where he lost to Littler and James Wade respectively.
Van Veen uses 50mm points on his darts that are higher than the majority of other players and, with an early warning to those who don't want to see blood, that had an inadvertent impact on the state of his throwing hand before he took on Humphries.
Speaking to ITV Sport after he defeated Michael van Gerwen 11-8 in the semi-finals, the camera panned to Van Veen's right hand, with blood covering the end of his thumb.
"I'm a bit bleeding today," he said. "Look, I've got a really heavy grip on my dart, which I love. But today, it really hit me on the wrong point.
"That's why I was struggling a bit on stage. It's not ideal, but I got the job done, and that's what matters."
When asked if it could be a problem moving forwards, he replied: "During the game, I already thought it was a problem, and I already thought I would have lost because of that. But I didn't.
"It was a bit of a mental battle as well, because the blood got a bit slippery and my dart was slipping all over the place.
"But I got the job done. I'm going to focus now for the final, I'm going to sort this out - hopefully it stops bleeding - and I'll be ready."