Pétanque players checking who won their game. Photograph: Getty/iStockphoto

Boules v darts: which deserves Olympic recognition?

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France wants boules on the bill when it hosts the games in 2024 and darts organisers are pushing for recognition, too. Here’s how the two sports compare

French cultural power is fanning out across the world in a way not seen since Le Petit Caporal. Under the Jupiterian presidency of Emmanuel Macron, the country is no longer satisfied with merely winning a World Cup. Now, it is coming for our boules. The Paris Olympics of 2024 will be the first to feature the sport, if French administrators manage to persuade the International Olympic Committee of their plans. As so often, from across the Channel comes a challenge. The game of arrows – darts – is hitting back against the French grapeshot with its own bid for Olympic recognition. Both have endured question marks over their sport status. But, in truth, that’s never been the key question in modern sport: which is more marketable? Here are some metrics.

Opportunities for outlandish dressing

Peter Wright during the BetVictor World Matchplay semi-final. Photograph: Roger Evans/Action Plus via Getty

Boules
In an attempt to professionalise the sport’s image, the French have banned jeans in national championships. But some are hitting back. The chairman of the Gy boules club protested against the mandate by arriving for a competition dressed as a clown, saying it was “allowed under the new rules”.

Darts
Wearing an outsized synthetic polo shirt remains de rigueur, preferably in a garish colour, such as Michael van Gerwen’s trademark snot-green.

Winner: Boules.

Celebrity power

Boules

In St Tropez, Karl Lagerfeld hosted a celeb-studded pétanque party for the likes of Vanessa Paradis and Diane Kruger. Chanel and Louis Vuitton have sold designer pétanque sets in soft leather cases for £1,500.

Darts
One Direction’s Niall Horan donned a flat cap to sit in the stalls at the 2016 Darts world championship, with golfer Lee Westwood also in attendance.

Winner: Boules.

Bad boys

Les Wallace in 1999. Photograph: Julian Herbert/Getty

Boules
In Marseille, at the 2010 Boules World Cup, a three-person team from Marseille reportedly threatened to “rip the heads off” a northern French team if they reported, accurately, that they had won. The northern French took this seriously enough that they duly reported a defeat and fled on the next train home.

Darts
Former darts world champion Les Wallace, whose nickname was “MacDanger”, was jailed for four months in 2001, for going the wrong way round a roundabout while attempting to evade police.

Winner: Boules.

Potential for participants to drop dead mid-game

Boules
New pétanque star Tyson Molinas, part of the 2018 Mondial-winning team, is a wispy blond 19-year-old in a polo shirt who looks like Justin Bieber with a brassica addiction. A picture of health.

Darts
Legend Eric Bristow died of a heart attack at just 60, in the car park of a darts arena in Liverpool. Andy “The Viking” Fordham weighed 196kg (31 stone) and drank 23 bottles of beer a day when he collapsed during a tournament in 2007, aged just 45.

Winner: Darts.

Conclusion

It’s true. The French have won this one. But they’ll still never get our post-2021 continued customs partnership trade harmonisation.

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