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Waltrip-ping the light fantastic

Sprint Cup veteran doing double duty with racing, dancing

Michael Waltrip takes pictures of people he recognizes among the 3,000 faces in the paint scheme of the Sprint Cup car he'll drive in Sunday's GEICO 500. Among those were his Dancing With The Stars partner Emma Slater and a couple Dale Earnhardt fans. During the walk-around he kept asking, 'Where's Alfonso?" a reference to DWTS competitor Alfonso Ribiero.

Michael Waltrip takes pictures of people he recognizes among the 3,000 faces in the paint scheme of the Sprint Cup car he’ll drive in Sunday’s GEICO 500. Among those were his Dancing With The Stars partner Emma Slater and a couple Dale Earnhardt fans. During the walk-around he kept asking, ‘Where’s Alfonso?” a reference to DWTS competitor Alfonso Ribiero.

By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today

TALLADEGA – It’s taking Michael Waltrip a little longer to get through airports these days. And he’s been going through them on a more regular basis lately so there have been a lot of stops.

It’s because people are recognizing him for a lot more than driving a race car or truck around the country at speeds close to 200 miles an hour.

The folks who know him best recognize Waltrip as a winning NASCAR driver, owner and TV analyst, but the general public is starting to recognize him as “that dancer” on the popular ABC reality show Dancing With The Stars.

“Can you imagine that? I did win a couple races, you know,” the two-time Daytona 500 winner said Friday. “The first time it happened, I didn’t see it coming. I was walking through the L.A. airport and this lady and her husband just stopped and pointed at me and said, ‘You’re that dancer.’

“I said, ‘Why, I’ll be darned, I guess I am.’ She said we love that show and we vote for you; they were in their 70s or 80s. I told them how my I appreciated that and they said ‘Don’t worry about what those judges say, just dance and have fun because that’s what we enjoy watching.’

“I love that people are so happy to see that. It makes me happy. It says in the Bible when you sing you’re supposed to make a joyful noise. Well, when you dance it’s probably noisy a little bit and if it’s joyful then it should work.”

Waltrip, one of NASCAR’s freest spirits, was among 13 celebrity dancers when the show premiered its 19th season Sept. 15. Now, he and partner Emma Slater are among nine pairs left despite regularly getting among the lowest scores from the judges each week. They had the lowest score in last week’s disco switch up.

But they’ve managed to survive into the next week’s show because, Waltrip is convinced, the NASCAR fan base – and folks like that elderly couple he met in the airport – have voted for them to stay. Now he wants to stick around to prove himself worthy of their confidence.

Because he’s won here before, Waltrip believes he has a better shot of winning Sunday’s GEICO 500 Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway than he does the mirrored ball on DWTS.

“If that dancing program was just about straight up dancing, I’m pretty sure Alfonso’s better than me,” he said, referring to show favorite Alfonso Ribiero. “I saw a video of him as an 8-year-old dancing on Broadway. When I was 8, I wasn’t doing much dancing.”

When he really thinks about, he isn’t really sure he’s doing it now. He spent five hours over two sessions in Oxford between race commitments Friday practicing for this week’s sexy tango, a dance he expects to thoroughly enjoy.

“We practiced,” he said emphatically. “I’m still not comfortable with calling what I do dancing.”

Still, he’s having a blast at whatever he’s calling it.

“I had the best time last week doing my disco and I was so proud of it until those four judges spoke,” he said. “They did not like my disco so well. One of them said, and I quote, ‘It was entertaining as hell, but I’m tired of being entertained.’

“What the heck? I’m not trying to win a Pulitzer Prize or anything. I’m trying to dance — trying to dance.”

Waltrip flies back to Los Angeles for the show immediately after Sunday’s race. In a town full of TV celebrities, don’t think he won’t be recognized in the airport.

Al Muskewitz is Content Editor/Senior Writer for East Alabama Sports Today. To comment on this story or pitch a story idea, contact him at musky@wrightmediacorp.com and he can be followed on Twitter at Al Muskewitz@easportstoday1.

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY RACE WEEKEND SCHEDULE

Saturday’s Schedule
Noon – Fred’s 250 truck race
3:40 p.m. – Sprint Cup qualifying
7 p.m. – Infield concert

Sunday’s Schedule
12:30 p.m. – Driver introductions
1 p.m. – GEICO 500

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