ALEXANDRA PALACE knows how to put on a party, and this year’s William Hill World Darts Championship will have a flavour of the Rio Carnival to it.
For 19 days from December 14, the iconic venue will host the world’s best darts players including the defending champion and tournament favourite Michael van Gerwen.
In the mix will also be Diogo Portela, a former teacher from Brazil, who is set to make his debut in the £1.8m tournament.
Portela is 1000/1 to lift the Sid Waddell Trophy and the 29-year-old, who was drawn to play the World No. 2 Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright in the first round, certainly has a head for figures.
An economist with a Masters in Business Management, he was a partner in an investment firm in his homeland.
However, after a swift risk assessment, he decided to go about trying to fulfil his dream of becoming a professional darts player.
During a chance encounter with a group of England supporters who were in Brazil for the FIFA World Cup in 2014.
He told them of his plan to move to London and carve out a career on the oche.
“They said: ‘you’re mad, don’t do it’ so I told them they had two options; forget all about it or help me. They helped me,” Portela told SunSport.
Still, Portela wasn’t able to quit his day job, and up until this summer was teaching algebra to Year 10 and 11 kids.
Spurred on by his ambition, and determined to prove a few people wrong, Portela made the leap.
A little over three years later he’s about to become the first Brazilian to compete for the biggest prize in darts.
Portela wasn’t reckless enough to leave Brazil without a back-up plan.
He learned English, completed a course at the London Business School and for two years he worked for L’Oreal.
More recently he was a maths teacher at a secondary school in Peckham.
“Teaching maths was just a part-time job for the first six months of this year,” he admitted.
“It was a bit of an eye-opener but to be good at darts you have to be good at counting so it kept my brain ticking – although there’s not too much algebra on the dartboard!
“I was teaching mainly Year 10 and 11 kids but I quit after the Darts World Cup in June and darts is my sole focus now.
“I felt some financial pressure during the first month (without a regular job) but then I began to see clear results in practising at home.
“I won four big local tournaments and I earned more money than I did from the school.”
He also contacted several Darts Associations in London and from the word go he played League darts almost every night to maintain his competitive edge.
The English fans he’d met in Rio helped him settle, a friendship was established and in 2015 they signed up for the Sky One game show ‘One Hundred and Eighty.’
The world’s best darts players teamed up with skilled members of the public to compete against each other and Portela got his first 15 minutes of fame.
Portela threw the tungsten, leaving his two team-mates to answer the questions, and the combination paid dividends as they walked away with a prize of £16,000.
More significant than the cash for Portela, however, was sharing a stage with his idol James Wade.
“I was so nervous to be playing alongside him, even more nervous than I was about playing van Gerwen.
Earlier this year, when I had just started playing on the ProTour, James invited me to his house for some practice sessions and that was unbelievable.”
Now under the guidance of Paul Gillings and the Darts Performance Centre, the biggest influence remains his father Mario, a former Brazilian champion.
Born in Portugal, Mario worked in a pub where some of the British ex-pat community played darts.
When he left Portugal for Rio, he joined a small movement and helped establish darts associations and a network of federations across several states all over Brazil.
It effectively introduced ‘arrers’ to a country where little else but football matters.
Almost inevitably, the passion was passed down a generation.
“I started playing darts one day during the school holidays. I was watching my dad throw and I asked if I could join him. He was surprised and he encouraged me.
“I was really dedicated, I practised really hard and then I got to the quarter-finals of my first tournament in 2004. I was 15 but I beat some of the champions in Rio.”
Seeing his son play on the biggest stage of all will be the proudest moment of Mario’s life and he’ll be flying from Sao Paulo to witness it firsthand.
It’s a journey he’s already made this year.
In March, he flew to Germany – via a surprise reunion at Heathrow – for Diogo’s first European Tour event, the German Darts Championship.
The tournament proved significant; after beating the 2012 World Championship finalist Andy Hamilton in qualifying he reached the second round and earned £2,000.
That performance led to the opportunity for a Brazil team to enter last summer’s World Cup.
A first-round defeat of Switzerland prompted the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) to stage a designated South & Central American World Championship Qualifier in September.
That also attracted players from Argentina, Chile, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.
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Portela beat his World Cup team-mate Alexandre Sattin in the final to book his place in the 72-man field for the 25th World Championship to be organised by the PDC, and secure at least £11,000.
“I just want to play well and show my talent to the world. It helps that I have some (big stage) experience but you need to have that consistency,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m the sort of player who will go up on the stage and fold. If I play my A game I can give most players a very good game.
It will take me a while to bring my A+ game to the stage but it will happen and I will never give up until it does.”
Also in the Portela corner will be Diogo’s wife Ariana, who also took a giant leap into the unknown by joining her husband on his adventure.
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She and several other family members and friends are looking forward to bringing a touch of the Copacabana to Ally Pally and painting the town yellow.
And Portela will have plenty of support at home.
“People in Brazil are starting to believe in me because I’m proving it is just a matter of practising.
“The other players are getting more motivated to improve their performances and we’re getting new players coming through.”
A decent run at the World Championship could inspire a new wave of Brazilian players.
It could also automatically earn Portela the Tour card that would give him a rite of passage into the PDC’s ProTour events.
Playing in the very last match of the first-round schedule, Portela is level-headed enough to appreciate his chances of being involved beyond Boxing Day are slim and his choice of walk-on music perhaps reflects that.
‘Mas que Nada’ will inject some Samba spirit into the vibrant and energetic crowd at Ally Pally but curiously the lyrics may not be the most motivational.
It roughly translates from Portuguese as ‘No Way’.
Either way, Portela will make an impression.
The William Hill World Darts Championship will be held from December 14 to January 1 at London’s Alexandra Palace.
It will be broadcast live on the dedicated Sky Sports Darts channel.
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