Do athletes have an advantage over other celebrities on Dancing With The Stars?
Do you ever wonder if one type of celebrity has an “unfair advantage” in the show Dancing With The Stars? I do. And specifically there is one type of celebrity that I wonder about having an advantage – athletes.
I did some quick research on the show about the celebrities who have won the title. Three winners were athletes – Emmitt Smith (retired professional football player, season 3), Apolo Anton Ohno (Olympic champion speed skater, season 4) and Kristi Yamaguchi (Olympic champion, figure skating, season 6). Season 5’s champion, Helio Castroneves, is an Indy Car racing champion. I think for the purposes of my article it’s safe to call him an athlete. So that means that 4 out of the 6 champions in the run of Dancing With The Stars were athletes. And former NFL player Jerry Rice was the runner up to Drew Lachey in season 2 of the show.
So I started thinking, is it their athletic ability that makes them champions, or their likeability as a celebrity? Athletic ability has to play a role in their ability to perform the routines, but then think about season 1 contestant Evander Holyfield. He is a professional boxing champion, an amazing athlete, and not so successful on the dance floor. The same for Floyd “Pretty Boy” Mayweather (another professional boxing champion), who was eliminated in week 4 of season 5 of the show. Clyde Drexler was eliminated in week 5 of Season 4. The great tennis champion Monica Seles was the first celebrity eliminated in season 6 of the show.
Overall I guess you can’t make the blanket statement that athletes will be more successful or have a greater advantage than other celebrities on the show.
As I thought about it even more, maybe it isn’t the athletic ability that matters? Maybe “star quality” or likeability plays a role in their success as well. But I think there is one other factor that is an advantage for an athlete – their work ethic. Yamaguchi spent hours on the ice since she was a child, and seemed as if it didn’t matter to her how many hours she had to spend working on a new move – she would do whatever it took to master it. The same with Ohno. How many hours has he spent alone on a skating oval doing what he needed to do to become the Olympic champion?
I think the answer to the question “do athletes have an unfair advantage” is an indecisive yes and no. It depends on the athlete, of course, but I think their relationship with their professional partner and the chemistry they show while on the dance floor is equally as important to any athletic prowess.
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August 6th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I always find it funny when people say that athlete don’t have an advantage for DWTS. Of course they do! Even without the physical aspect, most athletes are heros to us, whereas we may enjoy seeing someone like Jerry Springer on tv, he doesn’t have much of a chance against an Olympic medalist like Kristi or Apolo.