...Last year Matt Baker, who has high stamina, lost to Kara.

I always thought female celebs have advantage over the male celebs because they don't have to do the lifting and so would be able to sustain longer and perform better in such a challenge.

The fact that Harry's just done his QS (and really well) and few minutes later did that amazing swingathon seemingly without breaking a sweat, I think the judges made the RIGHT choice for letting Harry win the challenge, all things being equal (with Chelsee).

What are your opinions?

I think he said that Harry was more athletic.

One disadvantage for the female celebrity could be that all too easily the male professional does all the work throwing them around and the judges might want to see a more active role by the female celebrity. But I can't remember much of Chelsee in the Swingathomn.

Chelsee was good. I noticed her a lot, together with Harry, partly because I love to see Pasha dance. She did a lot herself, like Kara did last year (and she won last year, against Matt Baker).

Harry just outdid himself last Saturday and I am so happy he finally had a breakthrough dance which I can watch and rewatch, and Harry is not even a particular favourite of mine!

I don't like the swingathon because it's impossible viewing at home to see enough to evaluate how good they are. So it just feels like the judges are going on what they expect to see. That might not be true, but it felt like that to everyone I was watching it with.

As for whether or not it's easier for men or women, I don't know. I'm not convinced how important stamina was really, it's not like they were dancing for half an hour. It all seemed decided very quickly to me.

Swingathon is not a favourite of mine, and I even wrote a thread complaining about it last week. But the swingathon this series was surprisingly watchable. I rewatched the segment on iplayer and picked up many more I missed on my first viewing. Chelsee and Harry were streets ahead of others. Didn't really see Robbie because he was at the corner where the camera didn't pick up much. Holly and Artem was not good on second/third viewing. Alex was quite athletic too! That lift! She has very strong stomach muscles!

You're supposed to be voting on/for the celebs, not for which pro you've got a crush on

Anyone can vote for who they want for whatever reasoning it's their own money

Thank you for quoting trunkster as he/she's on my ignore list and he/she knows about it and always try to write sarcastic things after me knowing I won't be responding to him/her.

Anyway, I love Chelsee for who she is. I just happened to have my first male pro crush this year and really liking Pasha and what he's doing to Chelsee dance-wise.

Trunkster just doesn't like Chelsee and I believe in the past even sneered at her physical appearance, which I find very low.

He/she was quoted saying somewhere that Chelsee supporters can't even praise Harry or give Harry a higher score (the the one sentence review thread I created), and I've proven that's not the case. Despite me not really liking Harry (don't hate him either, he was a bit meh until last Saturday) and esp. not liking Aliona and her esoteric choreography, I thought Harry deserved a near perfect score last Saturday, scoring 46 out of the possible 47!

Some on here only vote for their favourite pro regardless of who they are partnered with. Flavia has many devoted fans who do that. My favourite is Vincent but I couldn't bring myself to vote for Felicity because she got on my nerves. Everyone's different.

Were some of the pro women dancing without shoes in just socks?

Harry did appear to be doing the most "tricks" and seemed to deserve to win from what we saw.

Like others have said it's difficult to see what they'er all doing and the camera moved around so much focusing on different people that we obviously missed a lot of what was going on

I too was concentrating on Chelsee and Pasha as they'er my favourites so saw them doing a few tricks in the distance but all of their close camera shots seemed to just show them doing the straightforward "bopping" stuff and then seemed to cut away every time the went into a lift or trick so we missed it

In the same way there seemed to be a lot of camera focusing on James and Alex in close up and it seemed that everytime we saw them there was little dancing and James had her permanently liften above his head in an ungainly hold and spinning her around

Well, I thought they were equal technique-wise as well, until the end when Chelsee ran out of stamina and couldn't demonstrate the correct technique, and was just hopping up and down.

And the Craig also said that he liked Harry's routine, so obviously when judging the pay attention to that and wouldn't mark a girl who's up in the air all the time above a guy who's doing a lot of work, techniques being equal.

Last year Kara's routine was also very athletic. She wasn't in the air all the time, and her lifts were physically demanding.

Doing lot's of lifts for the female celebs or easy choreography is for the celebrities who don't want to come last (e.g. Alex), not for those who want to come first.

I found it really difficult with the group format to see enough of any one of the couples' routines. I think they'd have been better doing a relay, even if that means they only do their routine once right through for time reasons, instead of couples repeating a short piece of choreography till they get eliminated. I remember thinking I couldn't see much of what Harry was doing in the way of steps, the camera seemed to focus on him doing lifts and somersaults, but thinking he must have put a lot of effort in and straight after his QS too, which was commendable.

I saw a bit more of Chelsee and in particular doing the steps I'd expected to see, but when Craig said they were comparable but Harry was more athletic, that made sense from what little I had seen.

I think it is amazing that she even got the 2nd place ;it just shows how good she is.She was the one who had an unfair disadvantage IMO because all the celebs already did the jive.Anyway , it even makes me more excited for her jive.
Harry is not my favourite, but he deserved that 1st place he was brilliant in the swinghathon.

Completely agree with this, and she was ill!

Well said. Only problem I have with Harry is the fun he seems to be having with Aliona in rehearsals never gets translated to the show.