Strictly Come Dancing’s Karen Carney has opened up about a spine condition that impacted her performance on the BBC dance competition.
The 38-year-old former England player and ITV’s lead female sports presenter suffers from a curved spine, making it “really hard” for her to open her posture up in the way she needs to for ballroom dances.
“There’s certain elements I won’t be able to do as well as I’d like to,” Carney admitted ahead of her Tango to Dua Lipa’s “Training Season” alongside her professional partner Carlos Gu on Saturday, 4 October.
Carney was awarded a total of 20 points by the Strictly judges for the performance, down 11 points from her leaderboard-topping jive in week one, which was dubbed “sensational”.
Oti Mabuse said: “It’s going to be something we need to challenge to stretch and open up. There’s a certain ballroom posture that we need,” adding Carney should “think about breathing” to relax.
Head judge Shirley Ballas said Carney looked “a little bit closed in” and recommended she lean further towards Gu’s right side. Meanwhile, Craig Revel-Horwood noted that a Tango should have a “wide frame”.
Some viewers expressed concerns that the judges’ remarks were ableist. “She literally can’t do anything about it and they were like oh well, find a way. Awful,” one person remarked on X/Twitter.
Following the judge’s remarks, Carney said she was used to constructive criticism as a professional footballer. “I want to be better,” she reflected. “I tried my hardest. That’s all you can do in life.”
On It Takes Two earlier this week, Carney told host Fleur East she had really been struggling to correct her posture. “It’s a real physical challenge,” she said. “Like, it’s really, really hard. I have a posture aid.”
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A posture aid is a harness that straps across the upper back to help train muscles that aren’t positioned correctly by engaging the nervous system. Gu explained: “Her spine is curved in, so she can’t fully open, not with her shoulder but her spine.”
Carney has played for Chelsea, Arsenal, Birmingham City and the Lionesses and is England’s third most-capped player of all time.
She competed at four World Cups, four European Championships and the 2012 London Olympics before retiring in 2019. She was awarded an MBE in 2017 and OBE in 2024 for services to association football.
You can follow Strictly Come Dancing’s second live show here.
