Dancing On Ice / Chicken Dinner / 29 January 2009 / Leave a comment

You'd have to have a really poor memory to have forgotten the Contrarian's warning a fortnight ago that Celebrity Big Brother favourite Verne Troyer would come up short. Ray Quinn [1.68] is at an even smaller price to win Dancing on Ice but the Contrarian is certain he will fail too.

The person who starts the strongest rarely wins

Ray Quinn has delivered the best two opening performances that a male contestant has ever produced on Dancing on Ice but that may prove to be a disadvantage. In none of the previous three series has the strongest starter been victorious. In series one Bonnie Langford was the early frontrunner but finished third, series two pacesetter Claire Sweeney finished second and last year Chris Fountain was pipped at the post by Suzanne Shaw. The audience will always find it far more satisfying to reward someone who starts slowly but works hard to improve over someone who has been great from the start.

Some viewers harbour resentment for Ray

Judging by the reaction on Dancing on Ice forums, a fair percentage of viewers don't want Ray to win this year's series because they feel that his background in dancing, having been a champion ballroom dancer in his youth, combined with his love of rollerblading, have given him a significant head start over the other contestants. There were similar complaints last year about Chris Fountain, who some felt had an unfair advantage because he played ice hockey. Despite top-scoring in seven of the nine shows prior to the final, he had to settle for second place.

Maria Filippov is a nearly woman

Ray's partner Maria Filippov has performed well in each of the last two series only to be denied in the closing stages. In series two she was paired with Duncan James and despite performing better than winner Kyran Bracken and his partner in the final, they were forced to settle for third. In the last series she partnered Gareth Gates and despite outperforming third-placed Zaraah Abrahams in five out of seven weeks, she was eliminated the week before the final.

Ray's too young, too male and not a sports star

Two of the three previous Dancing on Ice winners have been women and the one man who triumphed, Kyran Bracken, was a 35-year-old former sports star. There is a slightly better male win rate on Strictly Come Dancing, where three of the six champions were men, but again two of those were sportsmen and all three were in their 30s (Ray is 20).

The John Sergeant factor

Despite clearly being the worst contestant this year, Todd Carty is the shock third favourite to win the show [15] because he is entertaining to watch. The comedy vote was enough to get John Sergeant past talented rivals like Cherie Lunghi on Strictly Come Dancing last year before he quit and the fact his supporters didn't see him last as long as they wanted may make them even more determined to have an influence in this show. The main factor that suggested the Sergeant vote would die out was that there were four closely matched competitors (Tom Chambers, Rachel Stevens, Lisa Snowdon and Austin Healey) so the show was still unpredictable with or without him. However, with Ray looking so far ahead of the pack right now, more viewers could be persuaded to support a complete underdog.

One shafted contestant supports this theory

Jeremy Edwards, who was eliminated last weekend despite outscoring Todd by 6.5 points also believes that the show will benefit from Todd succeeding. He said: "Todd is a ratings winner. Everyone will be saying: 'What will Todd do next?' They'll think of something else for him to do. If you're smart that's what you do. It could be a Todd v Ray final and Todd could win."