Adam Peaty admits "confidence" knock after Strictly dance-off

By Neil Wilkes, Editor-in-chief

Published: November 4 2021 | 19:44

Last updated: November 7 2021 | 12:29

Adam Peaty admits that he has had to work on his "confidence" this week after landing in the Strictly Come Dancing dance-off last week.

Adam Peaty has admitted that he did not expect to be involved in the Strictly Come Dancing dance-off last weekend and has had to work on his confidence this week.

The swimmer and partner Katya Jones earned a score of 29 from the judges for their Viennese Waltz, putting them joint sixth on the leaderboard, but after the viewer votes were factored in, they landed in the bottom two.

The pair went on to win the battle, with Judi Love and Graziano Di Prima going home instead, and now Peaty is hoping to put that behind him when he takes on the Jive this weekend.

Talking on It Takes Two, he said: "I'm still carrying a bit of baggage from the weekend. It was tough to go to the dance off because it was so unexpected, I thought you know what, 29, solid.

"But it just shows you like with Rhys [Stephenson] last week, no-one is safe. I have to find my confidence again now. I do deserve to be here... I think. It's dancing and I need to breathe.

"We worked so hard on the fundamentals last week, all the fundamentals, the character, the musicality everything.

"And I thought 'you know what, I'm loving this so much and it's unfortunate we ended up in a dance-off' but you can't control that."

Strictly continues Saturday at 6.45pm on BBC One.