LOLO JONES HAS her game face on, and she desperately wants me to know it.
"Every fast dance, honestly, I pick them up really fast. I picked up the jive in, like, seven minutes. It was ridiculous. And that's one of the hardest dances." She's on a patio behind a dance studio, baking in the Los Angeles sun, a pair of oversized sunglasses hiding her eyes. But to stand before her is to feel the confidence of her gaze, a bravado both reassuring and surprising. Reassuring because Jones is in training for her debut on Season 19 of "Dancing With the Stars," that televised orgy of sequins and salsas, and one might fear she's out of her depth. Surprising because Jones -- who has competed in three Olympics and, well, let's say it, famously choked her way through each -- is hardly someone you might think would be (or, frankly, should be) this confident heading into any event. She has repeatedly told practically everyone who will listen that her senior prom date ditched her because she couldn't slow-dance. Lolo Jones is on a mission of redemption.
"Every race is different," Jones says. "There's going to be something that happens that you're going to have to adjust for, something that tries to stress you out, and you just have to stay calm. But that, I think, will be a huge advantage for me. Athletes, we're used to having to step it up for competition." When I ask if she's prepared for the possibility of getting voted off the show first, she lowers the shades and stares at me like I've just run over her cat. "Dude, that would be awful."
Keo Motsepe, the sinewy South African who is Lolo's professional dance partner this season, arrives, and the two head into the studio to rehearse their cha-cha. Jones certainly looks the part of a dancer -- tall and lean, her body all sharp angles, a tangle of cheekbones, clavicles, knees and ribs. But then the music starts and her confidence leaks like the air from a punctured tire. If you saw her in the Olympics, you've seen it before: Jones breaking stride, losing rhythm, a progressive panic gripping her body, stiffening her movements, slowing her down. Keo tries to keep her focused ("C'mon! Open, hit, open, hit, cha-cha-cha!"), but with each passing attempt, she visibly stiffens. "I just feel so awkward in the opening," Jones confesses, fidgeting with her ponytail for the 11th time.
Three days later, Jones watches as Randy Couture, the burly former MMA fighter, rehearses his fox trot in the ballroom where the show will be broadcast live. It's her first glimpse of the other 12 contestants' routines, and she looks sick. It's like being the Jaguars and feeling great about your playbook, then stumbling into the Patriots' practice.
Sitting by the dance floor, Henry Byalikov, one of the show's troupe dancers, has been evaluating the couples. He was voted off first last season with swimmer Diana Nyad, so he knows the potential embarrassment of an early exit. "Off the bat, Lolo would seem to have a pretty good disposition as a dancer, because she's used to moving fast and jumping," he says. "But the crossover for athletes to dance is always a bit touch and go, because the way we move our bodies, it's not about power. It's about finesse."
Couture and Michael Waltrip, the NASCAR driver, are the other athletes in the cast for the show's 19th season. They're looser than Lolo about the whole thing, more c'est la vie. When I ask Waltrip his biggest strength, he's quick with a line: "I have nice hips." Adds Couture: "Obviously, in dancing, nobody's punching me in the face, so I'm not too worried about it."
And so it is that the night of the premiere, Lolo and Keo dance fourth, and her performance starts bad ... before it turns worse. Jones misses her opening cue (which she will blame on the producers -- as she was, in the day, wont to blame poor races on false starts), and from there she's like a deer in the headlights, if that deer were also visibly counting steps in its head. The judges are, predictably, brutal. ("Lolo? That was more like 'Uh-oh,'" says one.) Jones shoulders the blame, but her flat affect and facial expressions for the remainder of the show, ranging from sad to furious, doom her. Social media is vicious. A typical tweet, courtesy of @ABRACCO: "@lolojones OMG YOU SUCKED... You and your sour puss face! Hopefully you get voted off week 1."
The following night, Lolo Jones is the first celebrity bounced from "Dancing With the Stars."
"I thrive on pressure. But it's one thing to go take dance classes at your local ballroom studio -- it's a completely different story to do it in front of 20 million people."
-- Natalie Coughlin, 12-time Olympic medalist swimmer, eliminated in Week 5 of "DWTS" Season 9
AS A PREMISE, "Dancing With the Stars" is, by definition, slightly absurd: Celebrities pair up with professional dancers. After 10 weeks, a winner emerges. Said winner receives a sparkling disco-ball trophy -- and, if lucky, a movie role on the Hallmark Channel.
It is a months-long grind, wrapped in upheaval. But of the many peculiar things about "DWTS," perhaps the most peculiar is that of the dozens of reality shows currently polluting our airwaves, it is, by far, the one athletes seem the most eager to do. Over the past 10 years, 48 of them have laced up their dancing shoes, an eclectic roster of greats and almost-greats: NFL legends Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Warren Sapp, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin; boxers Evander Holyfield, Floyd Mayweather, Laila Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard; snowboarder Louie Vito; NBA baller Rick Fox; hockey left winger Sean Avery; Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Shawn Johnson, to name a few. As a demographic, they perform surprisingly well: In the first 19 seasons (there are two a year; the 20th is ongoing, with the finale airing Monday the 18th at 8:00 p.m. on ABC), athletes have won the show eight times and finished second another five. Of course, it's one thing for the then-Chad Ochocinco to do the show -- he's loud and showy, like a running joke told only to himself. It's another for Martina Navratilova to traipse out in red fringe and jive.
"Nothing can prepare you for what occurs on the show. You're always miked, always have two people filming you. Every week they're trying to capture as much content as possible for these production packages: you fighting, or you falling on your ass, or falling in love, or something -- some kind of drama, which sells. By Week 7, I was saying, 'I don't know if this is healthy.' You'd get tired, exhausted, you couldn't absorb the information, and they'd be like, 'Why don't you get it?' And I'd say, 'I'm trying my best -- I want to get it over with as fast as you do!'"
-- Apolo Anton Ohno, eight-time Winter Olympics medalist, Season 4 champion
APOLO ANTON OHNO sits outside a Beverly Hills coffee shop, alternately sipping a bottle of goopy green juice and a chai tea. He's dressed in baggy shorts, black high-tops and a tight Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt that displays to fine effect his impressive pecs, the latter a result of his training for a Hawaiian triathlon. He still sports that trademark soul patch, still exudes the same sunny aw-shucks-ness that made him a poster boy for Olympic speedskating and helped catapult him to victory in Season 4 of "Dancing With the Stars."
"I had no idea what I was getting myself into," says Ohno, leaning in to sip his tea. "When they first approached me, I was thinking, 'This is not going to happen. Are you kidding me? A dancing show? I'm an Olympic athlete.' But when athletes get that taste of, 'Oh, I think I can win this,' it's a dangerous thing. Because whatever intensity level they were at, they double it." Ohno should know; he's nothing if not a textbook case on how to win the thing. During his season, he says, he identified early on that the show is a slog that, as in long-track speedskating, requires patience and a sixth sense of when to make your move. Viewers, who constitute half the voting block, want to see the dancers improving, see them failing, see them conquering -- the whole Roone Arledge journey. His initial dances, then, were clever but cautious, until he broke out of the pack with a hip-shaking samba in Week 5 that revealed an until-then-hidden sexy side. Suddenly, Ohno had the housewives of America panting -- and grabbing the phone to vote. "You have to have fun with this show," he says. "It's entertainment. The more vulnerable you are, and the more vulnerability you're able to show, whether you're being funny, or failing, the better it is for everyone, including yourself."
The winning formula, he says, is thus: First, you need some grace of movement. If the dance moves are less Fred Astaire and more Elaine from "Seinfeld," you're toast. You need equal doses of humility and self-deprecating humor. And you must smile. A lot. If you can do these things, you can go far. It's how rodeo star Ty Murray, who spent most of Season 8 dancing like a man who'd just gotten off a horse, eventually finished fourth; likewise, Hines Ward breezed to a Season 12 victory with little more than steady weekly improvement and a Cheshire cat smile. "One of my favorites was Warren Sapp," says Len Goodman, the show's acidic British head judge. "You look at him and think, 'He's a Week 1 or 2, if he even gets that far.' But, you know, he embraced the show, he got into it, he was joyful to watch." Sapp finished second.
"It's a popularity contest," adds Kurt Warner, who finished fifth in Season 11. "And I don't want to use the phrase 'train wreck,' but where there's controversy, it motivates people to vote."
Storming out angrily, cursing yourself, melting down -- meltdowns are huge on "DWTS" -- may not make a practice go smoothly, but they're television gold. Beach volleyballer Misty May-Treanor ruptured her Achilles tendon in rehearsal, and her subsequent screams of agony, played over and over, made for great TV; the open hostility between soccer goalie Hope Solo and her partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, had viewers buzzing for weeks. Solo later alleged that Chmerkovskiy slapped her across the face during a rehearsal; he called her a hypocrite and a liar.
The process also leaves some yearning to go home. Pro Bowl receiver Jacoby Jones once texted Hines Ward: "I don't know what I'm getting myself into." In Season 4, NBA Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler practically begged to be voted off. There was more than one occasion in Season 8 when viewers could catch Lawrence Taylor telegraph a look to America that might as well have been Morse code.
And not all athletes bow out gracefully. Sean Avery, upon learning his number was up, seemed inclined to cross check the judging panel into the boards. Others can't help but blame the refs. In an interview after being sent packing early in Season 9, mixed martial artist Chuck Liddell said of the judges: "Screw those guys. They don't know what they're talking about half the time anyway."
Athletes? Turns out they don't like to lose.
"There are certain sports where I imagined we'd find good dancers. Boxers -- light on their feet, great movers? Floyd Mayweather was on the show -- terrible. Sugar Ray Leonard -- [makes sour-milk face]. But then footballers, who you'd imagine to be these great big burly guys? I think more footballers have won the show than any sort of genre of athlete. So I don't get it. Tell me why. Because I don't know."
-- Len Goodman, "DWTS" head judge
PULL THE FOOTBALL helmet from the head of Donald Driver, and what lies underneath resembles nothing so much as a Roman warrior. He has the nose, the cheekbones, the jutted chin, the classic face and chiseled body typically found on statues in museums. And like many football players, when Driver is in game mode, he can access a level of intensity that's downright menacing. Good for football. Not so good for ballroom dancing.
During his "journey" on Season 14 of "Dancing With the Stars," Driver had to tune out distractions -- namely, calls from fellow Packers Aaron Rodgers, Greg Jennings, James Jones and Clay Matthews, who upon learning that he was doing the show all basically asked him the same thing: "Man, are you crazy?" Driver didn't care. To him and the other athletes who sign on, winning is winning, no matter how you do it or where you do it. Winning one more -- of something, of anything -- is proof there's something left in the tank. And what Driver lacked in natural charm, he made up for in take-charge domination. Each week he turned the dance floor into a battlefield, beginning Week 1 in the middle of the pack, with a score of 21, slowly and steadily improving, until he rang up five straight weeks of 27s (three 9s from the judges), vaulting him into the finals.
Many different things must happen to make it to the "DWTS" finals, but in that last competitive episode, the mantra is simple: You win the freestyle round, you win the show. The competitor's last dance in the finale is a freestyle. They can pick any music, do any dance -- the crazier the better. Driver's partner, Australian blonde Peta Murgatroyd, had been voted off the first week the season before when she partnered with an overmatched Metta World Peace. She didn't want to blow this chance. Which is why she was stunned when, during rehearsals for the finale, Driver, standing against a wall in a black tank top, arms crossed defiantly across his chest, made his stand.
"Nobody," he told her, "expects us to come out and dance to country music."
Murgatroyd protested, but Driver had decided. He busted out a few line-dancing moves, as if to prove some point. But basically he was selling his own belief, his own confidence. His game plan, in effect: Give me the damn ball. Driver had sussed out his competition, knew they would stay in their respective wheelhouses: The Latin would shake his ass, the opera singer would go classically theatrical. Driver would zig to their zag. He would shock America by paying homage to his Texas boyhood and come out in a sleeveless shirt of Packer colors, tight pants, boots and a cowboy hat -- and he would blow the damned doors off of "Dancing With the Stars."
They went last. Before stepping out onto the floor, Driver spied Season 3 champ Emmitt Smith sitting in the front row and walked up to him. "Watch this freestyle tonight," Driver said. "This is going to be the one that's going to separate me. It's going to be the best freestyle of the season."
Country artist Cowboy Troy was onstage, and at the first notes of his honky-tonk hit "I Play Chicken With the Train," Driver entered the dance floor stage left, two-stepping to the middle to meet up with Murgatroyd. For the next 90 seconds, they stomped, kicked and spun in a breathless, athletic routine. After side-by-side high kicks and bowlegged synchronized steps, Driver threaded Murgatroyd between his legs before spinning her around in a semicircle, followed by an 11-second sequence of more side-by-side dancing (which Driver insisted that Murgatroyd choregraph to show he was keeping up with a pro), before he flipped her upside down, they leapt onto a small side stage, he lifted her down and spun her above his head and she eventually wrapped her legs around his torso, until he spun a few more times (it was, for the viewers, dizzying by this point), and then it ended with a crazy 11-second section that had Driver flipping, lifting and tossing Murgatroyd around his body, like some kind of streetballer, as he spun in a circle 12 times. "We actually didn't nail that lift sequence until the final day of rehearsals," Murgatroyd says. "And we couldn't practice it a lot because it was so physically taxing, holding on to each other and spinning like that, so our arms were just dead at the end of it. But it just came together. We ended, and the room literally shook."
If there were a mike to drop in dancing, Driver could have spiked it.
Judge Carrie Ann Inaba leapt up onto the judges' table and pretended to throw a lasso; Driver stalked around the perimeter of the dance floor like a matador who had just slayed a bull, delivering his trademark slit-throat motion and mouthing to the judges: "Game over." Of the three competitors to make it to the finale, he had come in with the lowest combined average season score. The next night, he left with the trophy. A few days after that, Aaron Rodgers called back. He wanted to know if he should consider doing the show.
"I had thought it would be physically exhausting. You think, 'I'm an athlete; I can push through.' What you don't fully grasp is how emotionally and mentally taxing it is. Your brain goes on overload. Still, the thrill you get, as an athlete, when you accomplish something on the playing field? If you're not participating in your sport anymore, this is as close as you're gonna get to that."
-- Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic gold-medal figure skater, Season 6 champion
MICHAEL WALTRIP APPEARS a bit silly in his sparkly racing jumpsuit, a bright yellow-and-red contraption he wore for his cha-cha on the very first week of Season 19 of "Dancing With the Stars." Still, Waltrip is owning it -- like your crazy uncle dancing at the wedding. And he's donned the outfit again for the final episode, where all the stars return for the coronation of the winner.
The athletes didn't represent too well this season: Lolo out first; Randy Couture, the MMA fighter, out two weeks after that. Waltrip, despite a style that could charitably be called "heavy-legged," made it to seventh place. Never discount the voting power of NASCAR nation.
After the winner is declared (Alfonso Ribeiro, Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air") and the applause subsides, Lolo Jones meanders down the press line, a pained expression on her face. During the entire two-hour finale, the celebrity contestants have been joking with and hugging their pro dance partners like senior year is over. Lolo and her partner Keo do not even make eye contact.
I pull her aside, ask her how it feels to be here. She sighs -- heavily -- and throws a withering glare. "I had a lot of anxiety coming back, I'm not going to lie," she says. "I feel sorry about it, but I also can't put a Cinderella story on it. I wanted people to see how hard I worked. And I felt being the first one voted off was tough -- nobody saw anything, and the things people talked about me, they cut my interview package to make me look like this 'loser virgin.' ... People were calling me a sore loser and I was like, 'Really?' I've been to three Olympics, and every time I have been happy for my competitors who've won. It's been hard for me to process."
I ask Jones about things with Motsepe. She shrugs, tells me she feels that since it was his first season as a dancer on the show, he was in it for himself. She says she had flashbacks to that senior prom, when she was ditched by that date because she couldn't dance. "And it literally happened again. During our last dance, Keo wasn't even dancing with me. So it was not a positive experience." Later, when I ask Keo about Lolo's comments, he replies: "If that's how she feels, that's on her."
Such is the drama upon which "Dancing With the Stars" is choreographed. Which is why producer Rob Wade is already looking ahead to seasons to come, trying to rustle up future athletes, in search of the next dramatic arc. His dream list includes Dan Marino, Usain Bolt, Serena Williams, Yasiel Puig and Wayne Gretzky.
And so it is that when the Season 20 cast is announced in February, the roster includes two athletes: gymnast Nastia Liukin and football player Michael Sam. Liukin ended her career with an embarrassing fall from the uneven bars. (Redemption!) Sam was the first openly gay man drafted into the NFL but was cut by two teams before playing a down in an actual season game. (Resilience!) It might not be the playing field they would prefer. But it is, for now, like the many who have come before them, the one they have.