After a season of mostly highs, Katherine Jenkins and Mark Ballas hit a low on Monday night, when their final number of the “Dancing with the Stars” semifinals ended in injury, and dropped the pair to the bottom of the leaderboard.
“I’m with the Doctor, he says it was a reflectorical spasm in my lower back,” Katherine Tweeted on Tuesday, explaining her injury.
While there have been plenty of injuries among both the competitors and the pros throughout Season 14, Katherine handled hers in a very different way.
Injuring her back at the end of her Round 2 salsa on Monday night, the Welsh classical singer was clearly in pain, but instead of drawing attention to her fresh injury, she encouraged co-host Tom Bergeron to get the reactions from the judges, saying, “I’m OK. I’m OK. Please carry on.”
Then, upstairs in the “DWTS” lounge, Katherine apologized to partner Mark, commenting, “I’m so sorry if I let you down.”
After the show, Mark said that moment tugged at his heart strings.
“That breaks my heart to hear ‘cause she didn’t let me down, and we’ve had a great run. And if we go out tomorrow, we had a great time, and we’re just grateful to make it this far,” he said.
What “DWTS” may not have known when Katherine injured herself on the show was Mark actually changed his moves up in the moment, to help his partner out.
“I felt it,” he said of the moment when something went wrong in her back. “When I made the jump in the air, I felt it ‘cause usually I get huge height over her. She was deep in the bend… If I hadn’t of put my hand out, she would’ve fallen on her head, probably.”
Mark told Access that in the moment, he stayed true to a promise he made Katherine at the start of the season.
“I tried to make the jump smaller to roll under and push her back up to her feet and banged the crap out of my knee doing it, but at least she didn’t hit her head,” Mark said. “I made a promise to her – I said, ‘I’ll never let you fall on a live show.’”
While he didn’t let her down, Mark’s spirits were a low after the show, when talk turned to their potential of making it to next week’s finals.
“I think this could be it for us,” Mark said.
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