Happy birthday Luke Littler: champion turns double nine with world at his feet | Jonathan Liew
Lionel Messi had scored one senior goal for Barcelona,Sachin Tendulkar had scored one Test century,Tiger Woods had played four tournaments on the PGA Tour and missed the cut in all of them,Ronnie O’Sullivan and Serena Williams had just won their first major titles,Simone Biles, though already richly garlanded at international level, was still waiting to compete in her first Olympics.
These were just the other child prodigies.What had you achieved by the age of 18? How many of your dreams and aspirations had been conceived, let alone realised? How much of the course of your life had been mapped out for you? At the age of 18, your correspondent had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and at the age of 39 arguably still doesn’t.I suppose on a deeper level what we all crave at that age is meaning and direction, the acceptance and love of others, thrills and experiences, and in this respect, too, Luke Littler stands alone.That, as he turns 18, he has already won three of the four biggest prizes in darts – the world championship, the Premier League and the Grand Slam – is shocking enough.That he is already the ninth-most decorated player in the history of the Professional Darts Corporation is shocking enough.
But perhaps more impressive still is the way this teenager has navigated being a teenager: a phase most of us are still finding the size and shape of what matters, still learning and erring, still navigating without maps.Still struggling to define happiness, let alone find our way towards it.Littler, through a lot of talent and a lot of character and above all a single-minded sense of purpose, is there at the summit before all of us: a world of opportunity and potential stretching luxuriantly out before him, a guy who has already pretty much completed life.And there are still goals and peaks to conquer.The World Matchplay in July is the biggest prize yet to come into his possession.
A first tilt at the World Masters next week, a first World Cup this summer.On the current trajectory, Luke Humphries should comfortably be overhauled as world No 1 at some point this year.Littler is learning to drive and wants a Mercedes as his first runabout.Then the long slow process of accumulation: an inexorable numbers game of legacy-building and silverware and clout and cold hard cash.In the short term, however, turning 18 changes deceptively little.
Any changes are likely to be felt away from the oche: the emerging responsibility of bills and administration, perhaps a little more aggression and attention from rivals.Then there is the world outside, the Littler-industrial complex of brands and broadcasters and people who will feel entitled to a piece of his time over the coming years and who will no longer be fettered by the fact that the target of their pursuit is still technically a child.At one point last year, there was some talk from his team of a 2025 media blackout: a focus on darts and darts and darts and nothing else beyond that.Inevitably, it is a stance that has already softened a little.But the instincts feel right: the sense this is a talent that will still need to be nurtured and protected as much as possible, helped in the transition from mildly abnormal childhood to deeply abnormal adulthood.
After all, Littler was a child of the pandemic: perfecting his craft behind closed doors, a life lived predominantly online, a route to the top he may have pioneered but others will assuredly follow.The stars of the future will emerge not from the pubs and clubs Littler can now legally patronise, but from the bedrooms and the internet, where you can go on DartCounter and play anyone you want, whenever you want.Littler was the first to emerge from this new world order.But he won’t be the last.Nevertheless, his rise will not have passed unnoticed.
In the same way Woods inspired parents around the world to pursue golf as a fun, concussion-free route to untold riches, Littler’s path to glory will open up new avenues and markets to the sport.A few weeks ago, Littler was on the Alexandra Palace stage to present the Junior Darts Corporation world championship trophy to 13-year-old Lex Paeshuyse, who, despite barely looking big enough to reach the board, averaged more than Littler did in winning his first world title.Sign up to The RecapThe best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s actionafter newsletter promotionEqually, the next great champion could as easily come from China or the Philippines or the Caribbean.When people in darts talk of the way Littler has changed the sport, this is the sort of tectonic shift they’re talking about.For all this, nothing will ever quite recreate the thrill of those first 13 months when a child grabbed darts by the lapels and put it on the coat-hooks.
Who went on a journey and took us all along with him,Who somehow managed to look utterly invincible and utterly fragile all at once, the kid who looked like a man who looked a child,Will he eventually become too dominant? Will he eventually be beaten? Will audiences tire of Littler-saturation? For the time being these are questions that can wait, safely palmed off into a future that for now remains gloriously, pristinely unwritten,
Why is TikTok working again in the US as Trump takes office?
TikTok is restoring its service in the US after Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order when president to allow the app to continue operating.It had shut itself down late on Saturday in advance of a Sunday deadline to divest its Chinese shareholders or face a ban, but resumed operations on Sunday, the day before Trump’s inauguration, saying it had received the appropriate assurances from the president-elect.TikTok has been under threat from a US federal law requiring its American arm to shed its Chinese ownership – the app is controlled by the Beijing-based company ByteDance – by 19 January over fears the Chinese government could access the personal data of users and manipulate its powerful algorithm, determining what users see. The legislation forbade companies such as Apple, Google or Oracle from distributing or maintaining the app if ByteDance had not completed a deal by 19 January, amounting to a de facto ban.TikTok had said last week it would “go dark” if the outgoing Biden administration failed to provide assurances
Melania Trump launches meme coin as crypto conflicts worry experts
The incoming US first lady, Melania Trump, has followed her husband’s lead by launching a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency meme coin, fueling conflict of interest concerns as the new administration prepares to loosen regulation of the volatile and controversial assets.Digital currencies rallied as Donald Trump prepared to return to the White House. The decision to launch crypto coins on the eve of his inauguration alarmed presidential ethics experts.The price of the incoming president’s token, $Trump, had tripled to more than $70 (£57), giving it a total value of over $14bn shortly after its launch on Friday. However, the launch of his wife’s coin, $Melania, pared back those gains as investors piled into her rival coin
AI could destroy democracy as we know it | Letter
Your editorials and articles about AI, including Rafael Behr’s piece (Keir Starmer is right to gamble on an AI revolution, but it might not pay out in time, 15 January), are thoughtful contributions to the debate about this fifth Industrial Revolution. Much of it has considered how democracies might govern AI. Little, however, has been written about the elephant in the room: how labour markets transformed by AI will affect democratic governance itself. Since the second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the prevailing national political superstructure of industrial capitalism in the global north, apart from the interlude of European fascism, has been various forms of parliamentary democracy. Those structures developed, in large part, because organised labour could bargain with capital for a share of the wealth that human labour creates, and built political parties to represent working people’s interests
Who banned TikTok? Politicians toss culpability like a football
The United States of America deleted TikTok early on the morning of 19 January. A government formed “by the people, for the people”, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, has made scant evidence available to those people as to why. As those in power at the 11th hour realize how unpopular such a paternalistic move might be, each is doing their best to lay blame with the others.Why did the US ban an app used and beloved by some 170 million Americans? For fear of China’s propaganda and data collection. It’s a far-reaching, unprecedented move
TikTok users posting cat videos do not threaten UK national security, minister says
TikTok users posting videos of cats or dancing do not pose a security threat to the UK, a cabinet minister has said, as he defended the government’s decision not to ban the Chinese-owned video platform.The government has allowed the app to continue running in Britain, as it stopped working in the US before a federal ban comes into force.Britain’s approach to China threatens to be one of a number of sources of tension between Downing Street and the incoming Trump administration, with the UK looking for a rapprochement with Beijing while the US president-elect threatens further trade tariffs.Jones told the BBC on Sunday: “We always keep all of these technology issues under consideration, whether it’s for national security or data privacy concerns – we have laws in place and processes to do that.“We have no plan from the UK, so we won’t be following the same path that the Americans have followed, unless or until, at some point in the future there is a threat that we are concerned about in the British interest
Should I be worried about my obsessive TikTok use? My ‘For You’ page doesn’t think so | Emma Beddington
As the US TikTok ban looms, users of the app there have been posting farewell messages for their “Chinese spy”, satirising the security concerns behind the ban as they offer up heartfelt appreciations of the ultra-targeted content on their For You pages.There is a lot, they claim, to be grateful for: their “Chinese spies” have soothed and amused them, steered them towards splitting with unsuitable partners and toxic workplaces, helped them recover from divorce, changed their political perspectives and sometimes their entire lives. “My ‘Chinese spy’ was brave enough to tell me I’m an autistic lesbian and I should leave my husband. And I don’t know if anyone will care about me that much ever again,” reads a typical post, over dramatic footage of the grieving author. A commenter below claims the algorithm knew they were gay four years before they knew themselves; another says the app accurately diagnosed them with a skin condition that two dermatologists missed
Workers and employers: share your experience of the current UK job market
Donald Trump assumes office with promise to be the very bestest best | John Crace
Is the penny finally dropping on the post-Brexit economy? | Letters
Farage claims chance he could be PM within four years is up to 25% – as it happened
Lady Oppenheim-Barnes obituary
Trump ally says Peter Mandelson’s US ambassador job will not be blocked