Andrew Gilding has revealed he ‘felt awful’ going into his European Championship win over Luke Littler amid an ongoing crisis of confidence.
Littler defeated Gilding as a 16-year-old last December as part of his famous run to the World Darts Championship final. The youngster followed that up with another comfortable victory at Players Championship 20 last month.
But Gilding finally got one on the board against Littler on Friday night. Averaging just shy of 99 in a 6-4 win over ‘The Nuke’ in Dortmund, Gilding emerged a surprise winner and was strikingly open about his current state of mind afterwards.
“I didn’t expect this, watching how Luke had played lately,” admitted ‘Goldfinger’, who clinched the biggest win of his career at the UK Open last year. “I am always short on self-belief. I never expect to win a game. Especially against Luke and especially as I had an awful cold as well. I am on the tail end of that.
“I felt awful coming up to this. I did say beforehand I wanted to cross him off the list. It was the third time I’d played him. So it’s third time lucky. It’s a huge win. The last thing I had expected. Nobody expected this.
“I was thinking about the flights home on Saturday. The way he had played lately was exceptional. I was resigned to losing. In practice, I was awful until the last hour but it came together.”
Littler was fancied to make an impact in Germany after producing some of his best performances yet at the Czech Darts Open last week. Nathan Aspinall, Damon Heta and Michael van Gerwen were all demolished, with ‘Mighty Mike’ coming out on the wrong side of a 6-1 defeat despite averaging a staggering 112. But the 16-year-old was eventually beaten by Luke Humphries in the final.
Littler is steadily making his way up the PDC’s Order of Merit and has earned just shy of £400,000 since finishing runner-up to Humphries at the world championship 10 months ago.
Transitioning from an unknown to a figure of national fame, Littler won Premier League Darts in May and is now ranked 20th in the world. The youngster will be keen to replicate the success he managed last year when he returns to the Alexandra Palace for another crack at the World Darts Championship in December.
