To nobody's surprise, Tom De Lay announced he's done with "Dancing with the Stars" due to stress fractures in both feet.
Of course, he made the announcement AFTER dancing last night and AFTER amassing the judges' scores and who knows how many viewers' votes that COULD have gone to one of the other contestants tonight who at this writing are "in jeopardy" of leaving the ballroom (De Lay was "saved" by the votes tallied).
There should be a new rule on dancing: You get seriously injured (and I'm talking the kind of injuries such as stress fractures in BOTH feet that can leave you recouperating for a long, LONG time), you leave the show. It's not fair to the rest of the pack who are fighting for every single viewer vote.
Whoever is eliminated tonight can thank Tom De Lay on the way out of the ballroom.
Hi Rita,
I am not bitter. Just making an observation. I can empathize to a certain extent with his desire to go on in the competition, but by doing so, he deprived other competitors the chance to accumulate more votes (the votes he got Monday night). It's not as if Cheryl could continue on with a substitute partner when Tom bowed out Tuesday night. He was in excruciating pain on Monday night and kudos to him for dancing despite that. But I still think withdrawing on Monday night would have been the more gentlemanly (and more sportsmanlike) thing to do. He knew full well on Monday that there was no way he could continue on in the competition. Not with those kinds of fractures to his feet. I hope he really can return in a month to do the Texas Two-Step!
I disagree with your opinion.
While I can certainly understand your bitterness, I can completely understand why Tom would want to dance despite his injuries. You put time and effort into something and it's only natural that you want to complete it to the end. As a writer, can't you empathize? Wouldn't you want someone to see the article or piece that you were slaving away on for days? I'm completely sure you would have done the same thing if you were in a similar situation, as would we all.
And since Tom did dance, I believe, in fairness of the game, he DESERVED to find out how well he did amongst the pack.