Valentin Chmerkovskiy retires, joins Dancing with the Stars

Photo credit: Thomas Morton

The recent news that high level dancer, Valentin Chmerkovskiy at 25 has prematurely ended his competitive career has sent shockwaves throughout the ballroom dance community.

Like when Stefano Di Fillippo decided to switch from IDSF to WDC, Valentin issued a letter that explainned his reasons, which were primarily due to the politics in dancesport competitions today.

Valentin was dancing with Daria Chesnokova (girlfriend of Slavik Kryklyvyy) and at Blackpool 2011 he placed third. He was first the US and 9th in the world in the Amateur division.

He will be joining his brother Maksim Chmerkovskiy and be a pro on the 13 season of Dancing with the Stars. I think of all the male pros, he is probably the most talented.

He joins other high-level dancers such as Alexei Silde and Anna Firstova (who really did not get to reach their potential as professionals) in retirement. He was a truly great dancer who could have made the finals as a professional. Maybe he will one day decide to compete again (like Maxim Kozhevnikov), but that is rarely the case when a dancer joins DWTS.

To speculate, I think that Slavik might take Daria has his next partner. She is a very elegant dancer and high level who I think could hold her own against Slavik. If he does, let's hope that it lasts longer than his last partnership with Anna Melnikova.

UPDATE: I think Slavik isn't going to return to competition. Daria is on Dancing with the Stars with Val, so a partnership between them would be unlikely. In the upcoming documentary, I hear he has severe hip pain. Sad!

Here is a piece of Valentin and Daria's beautiful rumba

Maksim Chmerkovskiy is the new Bachelor (in Ukraine)

I guess Karina Smirnoff really broke Maksim Chermkovskiy's heart...so much so that Dancing the Star pro is looking for love on reality TV. Maks is now filming the Ukrainian "The Bachelor" with a bunch of single ladies vying for his attention.

When I read this I thought...really Maks, you couldn't get a date the normal way? 

But he says he has his reasons for doing the show.

"I'm going into this with a thought of 'why not?'. I know it’s hard to find someone you can connect to on a project like this, but nothing is impossible. For the sake of the show I can't reveal anything, but I must say I am very pleasantly surprised so far. "

He also adds "This is the first thing in a VERY LONG TIME that I'm doing for ME. For the first time I don't really care what people think. First time that I'm not being 'judged', 'placed' or 'criticized' (well, maybe criticized, but you know what I mean)."
 
He turned down ABC's American Bachelor to do it in his native Ukrainian.

I am surprised he would go down this route with the swarms of women in real life who would love date him, but I wish him the best with love.

But from what I know about "The Bachelor," the love looks good onTV, but fails to translate in real life.

Here's a video in Ukrainian with him on the show.