Pre-Season Spotlight On
Victoria Arlen and Val Chmerkovskiy
Today’s celebrity is none other than Paralympic Gold and Silver Medalist and ESPN reporter Victoria Arlen, paired with two-time Mirrorball Champion Val Chmerkovskiy!
Bentley Not only is Victoria Arlen’s story incredibly inspiring and fascinating, but it is flat out shocking, too. I didn’t even know that it was possible for someone to be able to even talk again after being in a vegetative state for four years, let alone gain the strength to overcome paralysis and become a gold medal Olympic swimmer. That is honestly jaw-dropping to me. I’m going to even go as far as saying that Victoria is by far the most inspirational person we have had on this show period. I hope the damage done to her body doesn’t keep her from giving us her all, but then again, I highly doubt she will let anything get in her way after everything she’s overcome.
But, of course, Victoria is much, much more than her story. But frankly, as much as I already love her off the bat, she’s still sort of a stranger to me. For some reason, even though this cast is one of the more unique and seemingly more energetic season than most, a lot of the celebrities just aren’t jumping out at me right away. And like I said with Jordan Fisher, Victoria just hasn’t shown me a lot of her personality yet. I mean, there’s only so much you can show on social media and on Good Morning America, so I’m not going to be evaluating personalities just yet. Nonetheless, I doubt I’m not going to like her, so hopefully I become her number one fan (although I am a fan of any inspiration like her regardless).
And, as the stars have aligned it, the highly favored Val Chmerkovskiy is her partner! I actually think that this was a really good pairing because Val is clearly a dancing powerhouse in the eyes of the viewers, and having him dance with a person who I am sure that pretty much all of the audience will love, they are going to be unstoppable. And the more I think of it, the more I am leaning towards the prediction of this couple winning it all at the end!
Julia So far Victoria seems like the only lock for the Finals this season. Regardless of her dance ability, she has one of the warmest personalities and a backstory that the audience is going to really latch onto. I’ve seen concern that since Victoria’s disability is not visible, the viewers won’t understand it, and while I agree the audience can be pretty dumb at times I think the show is going to make it crystal clear that she does, in fact, have physical limitations. I also think this will be a nice change of pace for Val, after getting mainly ringers as partners for the past few years. DWTS has been really good at matching celebrity contestants with special physical circumstances to pros who are able to handle the unique challenges that come with partnering them, so if they think Val will be a good partner for Victoria, so do I.
If Victoria turns out to be one of the better dancers of Season 25, she’ll probably win the whole thing. Right now I’m hearing she dances “like a grandma” (I believe those were Val’s words :P) so she probably won’t top the leaderboard a lot. But again, that doesn’t change my belief that she will be in the Finals when all is said and done.
No comments:
Post a Comment