“Girl on Fire” indeed. Hannah Brown’s “Dancing with the Stars” victory on Monday ended a four-season streak of male champs and equalized the number of male and female winners.
Now “Dancing” has an even 14 male winners and 14 female winners through 28 seasons. As Thanos would say, “Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.” What’s interesting about its champs, though, is a bunch have come during some one-gender domination. Seasons 2 through 5 were won by men (Drew Lachey, Emmitt Smith, Apolo Anton Ohno and Helio Castroneves); Seasons 15 through 18 were won by women (Melissa Rycroft, Kellie Pickler, Amber Riley and Meryl Davis); and Season 24 through 27 were all dudes again (Rashad Jennings, Jordan Fisher, Adam Rippon and Bobby Bones).
Had Kel Mitchell, who finished second, prevailed, it would’ve marked the longest win streak by either gender at five straight.
SEE ‘Dancing with the Stars’ recap: Hannah Brown wins the Mirrorball trophy
The last female winner was Laurie Hernandez on Season 23. The Olympic champ also set a record as the show’s youngest female winner and youngest overall winner at 16. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, Hernandez was fresh off winning a gold and silver at the Rio Olympics. After a lengthy break, the gymnast is now training for next summer’s Tokyo Olympics. Yeah, it had been almost a whole quadrennium since a woman won. But we also didn’t have the usual spring season this year, so maybe the drought would’ve ended sooner.
Brown — who put in her best performances of the season on Monday, including a perfect 30-scoring freestyle with Alan Bersten — was the only contestant to never hit the bottom two this season, so that should’ve been your huge clue. Now the question is, is she going to kick off a new streak of lady champs?
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