Noa-Lynn van Leuven sends message to Ally Pally crowd after trans star lost at World Darts Championship

Some sporting governing bodies, like those in cycling, swimming and athletics, have banned transgender athletes from competing in women-only events.

Darts has a different policy, however, with Van Leuven going up against both men and women.

And the Dutch athlete has now thanked those in attendance at Ally Pally for 'being with her'.

She said: “Anyone who is discriminating against me, or being terrible to me, it says more about them than me - I just want to play darts.

“The PDC have been really supportive and they stand behind their own rules.

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"At the Grand Slam there was a bit of booing at my first game but I didn’t expect the crowd here to be hostile, I hoped they would be with me and I thought they were with me.

“In the end, I guess the difference was inexperience.

"I want to become a better player, and the only way I’m going to do that is by being up on that stage competing against the best players.

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"Obviously I want to come back next year and I’ll go to Q school in three weeks to try and win a Tour card.”

Van Leuven also insisted it is a tough time to be a transgender sports figure these days.

She continued: “It is great to see what they are doing. If you look at other sports, you can see what they are doing, it’s easy to ban trans people.

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“Or if you have gone through puberty in the UK you can’t play anything. It’s terrible. One of the most important things is to be just you and do whatever you want.

“Other sports are banning people to get away (from it) easily. If you’ve gone through puberty as a male you can’t play anything right now.

“It’s terrible, why can’t people just be themselves? I think if we look at it, I have seen trans people getting banned. It is terrible for trans people at the minute to play any sports.”

Doets, meanwhile, will face Michael Smith on Thursday.

"It was tough, very tough - especially at the beginning," Doets told Sky Sports after his win. "She played better than I did at the beginning and it was really hard.

"In every World Championships, there is a leg like that [the first leg]. Every single leg I was just fighting, fighting, fighting. The crowd were amazing - they didn't boo anyone. They didn't boo me, they were great. I knew I had to beat Noa first, but it feels like the Gods wanted to give me another chance [against Smith]. It's a really good feeling and hopefully I beat him on Thursday."