Well, it’s all finally over for Ryan Lochte on Dancing With The Stars. What started a little shaky and scary (remember when those men rushed the stage to protest his involvement with the show) ended on a fairly high note — Ryan and partner Cheryl Burke were in the middle of the pack, but Ryan was slowly getting better. Unfortunately, Ryan Lochte was finally eliminated on Dancing With The Stars , and now the Olympic swimmer will get off of the dance floor and perhaps back in the pool.
Let’s be real here — Ryan went on the show to help deal with the fallout from his antics at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in the summer of 2016. Besides being a great way to get in shape and lose weight, Dancing With The Stars is a great way to revive your personal brand. Luckily for Ryan, viewers got to see the young man behind his idiotic mistake in Brazil, and I think that people really understood him more while he was on Dancing With The Stars. I know that his dance mates did — after protestors interrupted the show to proclaim that Ryan shouldn’t be on Dancing With The Stars, the entire cast banded together behind Ryan to say that he deserved a second chance just like anyone else. I particularly remember Derek Hough going HAM and running across the stage to get at the protestors — Ryan gained friends and his standing back on Dancing With The Stars, that’s for sure. He even got a standing ovation from the audience when saying his goodbyes on the show.
But the Mirrorball trophy just wasn’t to be this time around for Ryan Lochte, and that’s okay — he danced to show a new side of himself, and he succeeded. He showed America that he was sorry and that he wasn’t his mistake, and I think it worked. The newly engaged Ryan can now go back home with his head up high.
Images: Eric McCandless/ABC
