Sitting this one out. Dancing With the Stars pro Sharna Burgess is sidelined due to her knee injury and will not be dancing with her partner, James Hinchcliffe, on the Monday, October 31, episode.
“Sad that I won’t be dancing with my @Hinchtown tonight but I have still been teaching him via FaceTime while getting treatment with the best,” Burgess tweeted on Monday.
Fellow pro Jenna Johnson, who was eliminated in the first week of the competition with celeb partner Jake T. Austin, will be filling for the Australian dancer. The new duo will dance the Viennese waltz to “You Don’t Own Me” by Grace featuring G-Eazy from the film Suicide Squad.
Burgess, 31, hurt her knee, which she has suffered problems with in the past, during a dress rehearsal last Monday, October 24. After the accident, Burgess wore a knee brace during her performance and worked through the pain to earn all 9s and 10s from the judges to top the leaderboard.
A source tells Us that the injury is “really serious” and producers are monitoring her recovery to see if she will be able to dance with Hinchcliffe next week, providing he and Johnson survive the elimination.
“I’ve strained my [medial collateral ligament] so it’s overstretched and it keeps snapping forward against the bone from my kneecap,” Burgess told Us after the show, noting that she had an MRI scheduled for the next day.
“When this happened and when I fell, it was pure panic,” Burgess added to reporters. “I’ve had an ACL reconstruction on that very same knee so I was scared to death like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve busted my knee again. I’m out of this competition.’ In that split moment you think a thousand things. So then I got up and tried to figure it out.”
Burgess is confident that the race car driver, 29, is in good hands with Johnson, though. “She’s an amazing pro. She’ll take great care of James,” she said.
Hinchcliffe praised his partner for making sure the show went on despite her injury. “It just shows what a champion this girl really is — fighting through a dancing injury can’t be easy, I would imagine,” he told reporters. “It’s hard enough even able-bodied! She’s a pro, she’s awesome.”
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
