{"id":665487,"date":"2026-10-26T03:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T03:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665487\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T03:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T03:34:09","slug":"ross-smith-holds-on-to-beat-martin-schindler-in-european-championship-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665487\/","title":{"rendered":"Ross Smith holds on to beat Martin Schindler in European Championship final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Smith held off home favourite Martin Schindler to win the European Championship title for a second time, with world champion Luke Littler having been knocked out in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

England’s Smith reeled off six legs in a row as he took an 8-2 lead in the best-of-21 final against Germany’s Schindler in Dortmund.<\/p>\n

Schindler got it back to 9-7 before Smith, who won the tournament in 2022, managed to cross the line for an 11-8 victory. <\/p>\n

“It’s absolutely amazing,” Smith, who beat Luke Woodhouse 10-6 and Gerwyn Price 11-7 to get to the final, told ITV. <\/p>\n

“I’m not going to lie, I was a bit sweaty there. He wouldn’t let up would he? Full credit to him.”<\/p>\n

Smith won the World Series of Darts Finals<\/a> in September and added: “To win another major, not just this year, but just to win another major, I’m absolutely over the moon and drained. I’m buzzing.”<\/p>\n

Schindler thrashed Jonny Clayton 10-1 before beating Littler’s conqueror Krzysztof Ratajski 11-6 to reach the final.<\/p>\n

Littler’s shock exit came in the final match of the quarter-finals in the afternoon session, with Ratajski beating him 10-6.<\/p>\n

“Played well in the lead up to today, but just didn’t click for me earlier,” wrote Littler, who has yet to win the European Championship, in a social media post.<\/p>\n

“Thank you for all the support this weekend. The wait for this one goes on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ross Smith held off home favourite Martin Schindler to win the European Championship title for a second time,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-665487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}