SEARLE RAISES €50K FOR RARE EYE CHARITY

RYAN SEARLE says his World Championship campaign raised over €50,000 for the Cure ADOA Foundation and boosted awareness dramatically.

World No.12 Searle is managing the rare eye condition Autosomal Dominant Optic Atrophy, which he was diagnosed with in early 2024. 

The Devon thrower has admitted there is no cure and fears the condition could eventually force him to stop driving. 

Searle reached the semi-finals at Ally Pally before losing to Luke Littler, with sponsors Paddy Power supporting the cause by blurring out signage to highlight Cure ADOA. 

He said: “That was massive and I’d like to say fair play to Paddy Power because they didn’t have to do what they did with blurring out the signs before my semi-final against Luke.

“They could’ve just ignored what I said, so fair play to them. I think they’re the best World Championship sponsor the PDC have ever had. 

“As far as awareness goes, I think we’ve raised over 50 thousand euros for charity and, when you look at it, I think last year before I brought it up at the Worlds, they raised five thousand euros a year.

“To 10x that in that tiny bit of space is massive for the charity and they’re over the moon, and I’ll be pushing to try and earn some more money for that.” 

Unfortunately, Searle’s condition is hereditary, and both his son and daughter are also affected by ADOA.   

‘Heavy Metal’ revealed his condition forces him to adjust his positioning at the oche, often relying on muscle memory to hit his targets. 

He added: “You know the stage lights, I find it hardest when you’re back-stage in the practice room, it’s quite bright and then you walk back-stage and it’s really dark, you know it’s behind the curtains and whatever else.  

“And you sit back-stage and it’s really dark and then you go on stage and it’s really bright again and I feel like it takes me a bit of time for my eyes to adjust.  

“That’s something that I’ve always struggled with but I’m not doing bad considering.  

“It’d be nice if I can raise awareness about people that don’t have as good a vision as the average person, that’s only a great thing in my opinion.  

“I’ve been to exhibitions in the past where people have come up to me and said my vision in one eye is not as good as the other, what do you do to combat that?   

“I try and combat that because it’s my right eye that isn’t as good as the left, so I kind of combat that with standing a bit further to the right to try and get my left eye more dominant than the right.  

“I’ve tried to pass that on to people. There’s plenty of things, at the end of the day it’s more of a muscle memory thing than a vision thing.  

“But it’s a difficult thing and the more awareness the greater it is.  

“If I can be an inspiration to people that can’t see very well, then that means a lot to me.”

Image by Taylor Lanning.