Lorraine Winstanley’s first world championship, in 2011, was played under her maiden name, Lorraine Farlam. Her best one came in 2019, when she went to Frimley Green as top seed and reached the final.
Buxton and the Day Job
She was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, on 28 October 1975 and has been playing since 1996. Darts has never been her full-time job: she works as a beauty therapist. She played county darts for Cheshire and later for Yorkshire, and was selected for England.
She is married to Dean Winstanley, who was runner-up at the 2011 men’s championship at Lakeside. The two won the mixed pairs together at the 2011 Turkish Open. Her walk-on music is “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
2010 and 2011: The Breakthrough
Farlam won the Scottish Open in 2010 and kept it in 2011, the year her results took off. She also won the BDO British Open, the BDO Gold Cup and the Romanian Open, where she beat Jane Shearing 5–1 in the final. She was runner-up at the German Open, the England Classic and the Mariflex Open, and reached the quarter-finals of the World Masters.
Her Lakeside debut came in January 2011 and ended in the quarter-finals, 2–0 to Russia’s Irina Armstrong.
Hedman Twice, Dobromyslova Once
In 2012 she went one round further and lost the semi-final to Deta Hedman in a last-leg decider. In 2013 Anastasia Dobromyslova beat her 2–0 in the quarter-finals. After first-round exits in 2014 and 2015, she reached the quarter-finals again in 2016 and met Hedman again, with the same result. A further quarter-final followed in 2018.
The first major title came at the 2017 World Masters. She entered in the last 16, beat Rachna David, Dobromyslova and Tricia Wright, and won the final 5–2 against Corrine Hammond. In 2018 she reached the final of the BDO World Trophy, beating Dobromyslova on the way, and lost it 6–3 to Fallon Sherrock.
Top Seed in 2019
The 2019 championship was her best run. As top seed she beat Casey Gallagher 2–1, then Trina Gulliver, the ten-time champion, 2–0 in the quarter-final. In the semi-final she lost the first set to Dobromyslova and won the next two.
The final was against Mikuru Suzuki, an unseeded qualifier from Japan, and it went the other way. Suzuki won 3–0, and Winstanley took two legs in the match. The women’s world championship went to Suzuki again a year later; Winstanley’s 2020 run ended in the quarter-finals against Lisa Ashton.
Shortly after that final she entered PDC Q School for a Tour Card, did not win one, and stayed with the BDO. Between the world championships she kept collecting circuit titles: the Welsh Masters in 2012, the Swedish Open in 2013 and 2014 and the Slovak Open in 2020.
After the BDO
When the BDO collapsed in 2020, she moved onto the PDC Women’s Series and the Challenge Tour while staying with the WDF. Her first PDC title came in 2022 at Women’s Series event 10, where she beat Rhian O’Sullivan in the final, and that season took her to the first Women’s World Matchplay. She beat Rhian Griffiths 4–3 there and lost the semi-final 5–2 to Sherrock.
At the first WDF World Championship in 2022 she reached the semi-finals and lost to the eventual champion, Beau Greaves. In 2023 Aileen de Graaf beat her in the quarter-finals. She was back at the Women’s World Matchplay in 2025 and lost her quarter-final 4–0 to Noa-Lynn van Leuven.
