Darts player Kim Huybrechts (38) will not be able to play for at least four weeks after he attended the cup final as a football supporter and broke his collarbone. Huybrechts says he was attacked out of nowhere, but an eyewitness has a different version.
Vincent Van Genechten, Cedric Lagast and Amaury Michaux
Yesterday at 2:00 PM
Kim Huybrechts, the current Belgian number two in darts, went to support Antwerp on Thursday during the cup match at the Heysel in Brussels. Huybrechts is an avid supporter of Antwerp, which lost the final to Union. When Huybrechts walked back to the buses at Parking C with other supporters after the match, things went wrong.
© rr
No knowledge
The walk to Parking C, about a mile away, went through the Verregat Park. Huybrechts said afterwards on social media that Antwerp supporters were provoked at that moment by a group of immigrant young people. When Huybrechts stepped through to reach the bus, he was allegedly attacked from behind out of nowhere.
Huybrechts also repeated this to a TV crew from his hospital bed on Friday morning: “The moment I pass there, I get a push. I want to turn around, and that’s when a motorcycle helmet hits me in the face. (…) I am tackled from under. Suddenly they started stomping on my head.” Huybrechts suffered a double fracture of his collarbone and had to undergo surgery on Friday.
The Brussels police had no knowledge of the incident on Friday. According to the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, no investigation is underway as no one has filed a complaint. Huybrechts stated on Radio 2 on Friday that he does not yet know whether he will file a complaint: “I don’t know if that makes sense.”
Another Antwerp supporter who witnessed the incident qualifies Huybrechts’ explanation: “A group of supporters and a group of 10 to 20 young people from Brussels stood opposite each other. Most of them seemed underage to me. Suddenly something happened that caused everyone to scatter. It was the supporters who chased the young people.”
Someone would have shouted that someone had been hit with a helmet. “Huybrechts was one of the men who chased those teenagers. He fell. It looked like he tripped over his own feet. When he tried to get up, two or three of those guys gave him a few cowardly kicks.”
Kim Huybrechts hopes to have recovered sufficiently within four weeks for the Euro Tour qualifications in Antwerp.
© PDC