LUKE HUMPHRIES admits he has “lost that spark” despite NINE major finals in a year.

The world champion moved into the final day of the Czech Darts Open but was clearly unsettled with his own performance.

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Cool Hand, 29, then revealed he struggled to play in the heat and will make changes next year.

He said: “It’s really hot and I don’t cope well with the heat with my darts.

“I think I’m going to have to adapt next year. I’ve been talking to my supplier Red Dragon so maybe we will go for a bit more grip, longer points. Stuff like that.

“I feel like I can improve from what I’ve been doing, I feel like I’ve lost that spark a little bit.

“I know I played well, 100 average… but that first dart at double 20 in the first leg just slipped out of my hand.

“It’s just not normal so maybe I need to adapt and change things. I’m one of those people I don’t like changing a lot but I have to adapt.

“I’m going to add grip, longer point and less barrel and see how it goes because I feel like I’m on the bottom wire quite a lot.

“I want to be back to my fluent best when I’m putting people off the board, not giving them chances.

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“It’s hard to adapt to the heat and that’s just one of my worries but it was a steady performance. It just felt forced, I know there’s another level to me. I’ve got that to prove to win.”

Humphries beat Ritchie Edhouse 6-2 last night and faces Gian van Veen this afternoon as he looks to make the last eight and decisive evening session.

The world No1 is not the only player to make a change recently, with Luke Littler switching darts at the recent Player Championship 27 and 28.

But in Prague, he returned to his usual arrows, revealing: “There was load of talk about changing my darts so I’ve come here this weekend and made the decision to go back to what I know best. They went well tonight.”

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Featherweight champion Ilia Topuria has made all sorts of predictions for his upcoming fight at UFC 308, but don’t expect Max Holloway to entertain any of his so-called challenges.

The most recent declaration from Topuria was that he planned to march to center of the octagon at the start of the fight and point to the ground as an invitation for Holloway to meet him there to start trading bombs. It’s a gesture that Holloway made famous after he did that years ago to prompt a wild exchange in the closing moments of his fight with Ricardo Lamas before doing it again at UFC 300 and pulling off one of the craziest knockouts in history with a last-second finish over Justin Gaethje.

Holloway says the problem with Topuria trying to steal his move is that he doesn’t even understand when or why he’s done that in the past.

“The point down moment — I don’t think he gets the gist of it,” Holloway told MMA Fighting. “At the end of the day the point down, it’s something that you do towards the ending of the fight. If something is going good, if the fight is entertaining or you’re winning, you give the other guy a shot. The moment is the moment for a reason.”

Topuria promised if Holloway actually met him in the center and threw caution to the wind that he would deliver a first-round knockout. Holloway doesn’t discount that as a possibility—just like he could leave Topuria face down on the canvas in the same exchange—but that’s courting disaster in a fight that’s supposed to showcase two of the best and most skilled fighters in the world.

“The belt is called the ‘Blessed Man Forever’ or what you guys want to call ‘the baddest mother effer,’” Holloway said referencing the ‘BMF’ title he won when he defeated Gaethje. “If the belt was the ‘DMF,’ the dumbest mother effer, then maybe I would get sucked into it. It’s far from that.

“Like what I told you, and I told him, he talks about being boxer — that’s not very much boxer IQ’ish of him, but we’ll see what happens.”

Topuria challenging Holloway to throw down with him in a Toughman-style brawl is just the latest bit of trash talk coming from the featherweight champion ahead of UFC 308. He’s also said recently that Holloway didn’t actually want this fight but instead was forced into accepting the title bout after the UFC supposedly passed on a potential matchup against Michael Chandler instead.

If Topuria is trying to get in Holloway’s head with these constant jabs, he might be wasting his time because the 32-year-old Hawaiian can only laugh at that accusation.

“The first guy I called out [after UFC 300] was the man sitting ringside,” Holloway says referencing Topuria. “It’s funny. He says that, but then you can go and click, there’s an interview of him saying that he won’t fight me if the BMF title wasn’t on the line. The last time I checked, the BMF title is not on the line.

“So if anybody got forced to fight, it looks like him. It came out of his own mouth. He said he wasn’t going to fight me unless the BMF title is on the line. It’s not, buddy. So I guess he played himself on that one.”

Holloway admits that he had plenty of options available to him after his jaw-dropping win over Gaethje, but the only fight he really wanted was the one he got at UFC 308.

“I wanted Ilia Topuria,” Holloway said. “I wanted the featherweight title. I wanted to be a two-time world [champion]. The undisputed title is what I wanted.”

Between now and Saturday night, Holloway expects he’ll hear Topuria issue more nonsensical challenges and make all sorts of predictions about the fight.

None of that matters much to Holloway as long as Topuria shows up at his very best and doesn’t forget to bring that UFC title with him to Abu Dhabi.

“At the end of the day, if that’s what he needs to get himself to the fight or through the fight or whatever it is to the date, then so be it,” Holloway said. “Some people, that’s what they need. They need that self-confidence. They need to build their self-confidence some way, and if it’s pumping his chest and slapping his chest and being like ‘I’m the man,’ then that’s him.

“You can’t take it away. He got pretty far using that technique. So at the end of the day, if he’s using it for this fight, so be it.”

Factory Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti was crowned the 2024 DTM champion after finishing second to Luca Engstler in Sunday’s finale at Hockenheim, as title rival Kelvin van der Linde struggled to 12th.

Having retaken the lead in the championship by scoring three bonus points in qualifying on Sunday morning, SSR Performance’s Bortolotti became the first Lamborghini driver to clinch a title in the DTM despite dropping behind Engstler in the pitstop cycle in the hour-long race at the former German Grand Prix venue.

The Italian’s success was made easy by a torrid start from Saturday winner van der Linde, who slipped from fifth to 11th on the opening lap and couldn’t make any meaningful recovery while carrying 20kg of success ballast on his Abt Audi.

The podium was completed by three-time DTM champion Rene Rast for Schubert Motorsport, helping the BMW squad clinch the teams’ title.

At the start of the race, Bortolotti pulled away cleanly from pole position, with his team-mate Nicki Thiim acting as a rear-gunner in second ahead of Abt Audi’s Ricardo Feller.

Engstler got the jump on van der Linde at the start and moved up to fifth, while the South African continued to slip down the order on lap 1 as he complained about a lack of grip on team radio.

Bortolotti pulled out an advantage of over four seconds in the opening stint, which allowed SSR Performance to play it safe when the pitlane window opened at the 20-minute mark.

While his chief rival van der Linde pitted at the first opportunity to get a new set of tyres fitted to his Audi, Bortolotti stayed out until lap 19, with SSR servicing his car in 6.8s.

Luca Engstler, Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini Huracán EVO GT3

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

That left him vulnerable to an undercut from GRT Lamborghini driver Engstler, whose tyres were already up to temperature, with the German driver making a brilliant pass on Turn 11 to snatch the lead.

The Italian came back at him in the final quarter of the race, but GRT Lamborghini’s Engstler was able to hold him off to clinch a second career victory in the DTM.

While Bortolotti missed out on a second victory in as many race weekends, the runner-up finish was enough for him to win the DTM title for the first time after near-misses in both 2022 and ’23.

Rast staged an incredible drive from 11th on the grid to clinch his fourth podium of the year, closing within eight tenths of Bortolotti with an impressive charge in the final stint.

Fourth place went to Manthey EMA Porsche of Thomas Preining, while Thiim had to settle for fifth place after losing a likely podium finish by going off the track on his out-lap.

Feller held off the Schubert BMW of Marco Wittmann in the final laps to take seventh, while Winward Mercedes’ Lucas Auer dropped from fifth to eighth in the closing stages of the race.

BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde finished ninth, while championship contenders Maro Engel and brother Kelvin van der Linde languished in 10th and 12th respectively, separated by the Emil Frey Ferrari of Thierry Vermeulen.

Mercedes was hit by an overnight Balance of Performance change which left Engel 15th on the grid, while van der Linde lacked the pace to put a recovery drive after a disastrous opening lap of the race dropped him outside the top 10.

The list of points scorers was completed by HRT Mercedes’ Arjun Maini and the Lamborghinis of Maximilian Paul (Paul Motorsport) and Frank Perera (GRT).

The only retiree from the race was Maini’s team-mate Jules Gounon, who had to peel into the pits with nine laps to go with a right-rear puncture.

The manufacturers’ championship was won by Mercedes, meaning all three DTM titles went to different brands.

Great Britain’s Duncan Scott claimed victory in the men’s 200m freestyle on the third and final day of the short course World Cup event in Shanghai.

The 27-year-old put in a strong showing in the second half of the race to win in one minute 40.92 seconds, with Australia’s Edward Sommerville second in 1:42.14 and Danas Rapsys, of Lithuania, third in 1:42.35.

“It’s a really tough three days, [we’re] right at the end and it’s a good quality field. I’m just really happy to be able to win it,” said Scott.

“This is very tough. The heats are more challenging than you want and the finals are tough as well.”

Leon Marchand added victory in the 400m individual medley to his win in the 200m individual medley a day earlier, before finishing fourth in the 200m breaststroke.

“I think I forgot how hard the 400 IM is,” said France’s Marchand, who won in 4:00.03. “I think I just went out a little too fast on the fly and was just tying up in the last 100.

“I started training a month ago so I’m trying to get new details and focus on my technique.”

VICTOR BONIFACE was involved in a terrifying car accident after Bayer Leverkusen’s Bundesliga victory on Saturday.

The Nigeria international posted photos on his social media showing the wreckage from the collision.

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Boniface, 23, appeared to be taken to hospital after the incident as he shared a selfie from a hospital bed.

Fortunately, the star appears to have avoided serious injury as he took to X to share an update with his followers.

He simply wrote: “God is the greatest”.

Boniface didn’t escape completely unscathed, however.

The former Union SG striker posted a video of his bloodied hand which appeared to have been badly cut during the accident.

The same video showed just how bad the damage was to his car with the front bonnet completely smashed in.

Boniface had played for Leverkusen just hours before the incident as Xabi Alonso‘s side beat Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1.

The bagsman even found the back of the net, scoring the winner in the 71st minute.

Boniface’s crash comes just a matter of days after being locked in an abandoned airport with the Nigerian national team for 18 HOURS.

Nigerian players and staff were left without food, water or access to phone connections at the abandoned airport which had its gates locked.

The unbelievable moment happened prior to the Super Eagles Africa Cup of Nations clash with Libya.

The match was ultimately postponed following the whole ordeal.

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