It’s time for the first part in my series where I take a brief look at the finalists and their Strictly journeys so far. I will be doing them in the order they qualified for the final so will begin with Kelvin and Oti
Best Dance
Kelvin and Oti have had all four judges reaching for their 10 paddles on one occasion this series. During last weekend’s semi final their Quickstep impressed all of the judges scoring a maximum 40 (10,10,10,10)
Worst Dance
You have to travel all the way back to week 2 of the series for their worst routine. Their Waltz scored a still respectable 28 (7,7,7,7)
Average Score
Kelvin and Oti have amassed a total of 465 points from 13 routines making for an average of 35.8. This is the highest average of the three finalists
Number Of Times In The Dance Off
Kelvin and Oti are one of two couples in the final to have never landed in the bottom two and have never faced a dance off
Odds Of Winning
Kelvin and Oti are currently odds on favourites to lift the Glitterball next weekend with bookmakers offering prices in the range of 1/3
Can They Win?
They’ve topped pretty much every poll I’ve run this series (currently sitting top with 44% in my winners poll after the semi final), are odds on favourites with the bookmakers and have been consistently near the top of the judges leaderboard. They’ve impressed pretty much from the off. All of which should make this pretty much banged on for them right?
Well I’d actually be cautious to say this is as one sided as things would suggest. This is Oti’s second final and she’s been in this position before with Danny Mac who also topped most of my polls and was consistently near the top of the leaderboard but ended up losing to outsider Ore Oduba that series.
Oti is however one of the strongest pros on the series and has formed a good, popular partnership with Kelvin and it is surely a matter of when, not if, Oti will lift the Glitterball with one of her partners. But for me there are two barriers that could make them runners up rather than winners
Firstly the public love a good journey in Strictly and love to see someone start off as a relative novice in week 1 and become a fantastic dancer by the time of the final. Kelvin has not had much of a journey though. He started off great with a score of 32 in week 1, but has only scored 40 on one occasion and in his last dance in the Semi Final scored 37. That’s only an improvement of 5 points from first to last dance (so far) and an improvement of 12 points from their lowest scoring dance to their highest. Compare that with last year’s winners Stacey and Kevin who went from scoring 20 in week 2 to 39 in the final. It’s a similar story for Joe and Katya the year before.
Secondly there is the Motsi factor. I know from comments on my social feeds and elsewhere that many people feel Motsi cannot possibly be impartial when judging her Sister and this may cause viewers to put their votes elsewhere on Saturday. I’d like to add that I don’t buy into this and apart from being a bit trigger happy with her 10 paddle in the Semi Final I think Motsi’s judging of all the couples has been fair and she has been a good replacement for Dame Darcey in my opinion. Plus Motsi judged Oti before in the German version without issues
Kelvin’s public vote has also never been tested as he has been consistently top or near the top of the judges leaderboard and as they have never been in the bottom two we can’t say too much about Kelvin’s public vote other than the fact that he polled more than fellow finalist Karim during last weekend’s semi final and out of the 5 possible permutations that would have given the dance off result we had in the semi finals Kelvin outpolls Emma in two of them. Of course he is topping my poll and the results of my poll match one of the possible permutations that would have resulted in last weekend’s dance off but my polls have been wrong before especially this series
What do you think of Kelvin and Oti. Will you be supporting them in the Final? You can let me know your thoughts right here in the comments section or over on Facebook or Twitter
Don’t forget to check out part 2 of this series in the coming days where I’ll be taking a look at Emma and Anton. And you can still vote in this week’s poll and tell me who your winner is after the semi final
[poll id=”117″]
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