Jr Martinez Injury Opens The Door For Ricki Lake

JR Martinez has suffered a setback on Dancing With The Stars this week, with an incident that draws certain parallels with its UK equivalent 'Strictly Come Dancing' where professional dancer Artem Chigvintsev has been forced to withdraw with a fracture in his spine, leaving celebrity partner Holly Valance with replacement Brendan Cole.

Back to the US though, Parade magazine reports that Iraqi war veteran Martinez suffered severe derailment as the show hit the semi-final stage with it being revealed that the 28 year old had twisted his ankle during rehearsals earlier in the week with professional partner Karina Smirnoff meaning that his resulting paso doble ran into problems at a stage when it mattered the most. Speaking to the pair after their performance, judge Len Goodman was in typically forthright mood, telling them "I know you suffered an injury, but we can only call it as we see it."

In what's clearly been a demanding competition both physically as well as mentally for all the contestants, Martinez wasn't even alone on finding himself injured on the dance floor - even managing to avoid the wooden spoon in points - as former soccer player Hope Solo admitted she was suffering from shoulder pain related to a previous injury. Stating that "I'm in pain pretty much the entire time I'm on the dance floor", her protestations were nevertheless inadequate to save her from a meagre 49 points over the three dances. In stark contrast Ricki Lake and Rob Kardashian were in near flawless form with their respective partners, topping the leaderboard jointly with 67 points each.