What on earth draws athletes to 'Dancing With the Stars'?

LOLO JONES HAS her game face on, and she desperately wants me to know it.

"Every fast dance, honestly, I pick them up really fast. I picked up the jive in, like, seven minutes. It was ridiculous. And that's one of the hardest dances." She's on a patio behind a dance studio, baking in the Los Angeles sun, a pair of oversized sunglasses hiding her eyes. But to stand before her is to feel the confidence of her gaze, a bravado both reassuring and surprising. Reassuring because Jones is in training for her debut on Season 19 of "Dancing With the Stars," that televised orgy of sequins and salsas, and one might fear she's out of her depth. Surprising because Jones -- who has competed in three Olympics and, well, let's say it, famously choked her way through each -- is hardly someone you might think would be (or, frankly, should be) this confident heading into any event. She has repeatedly told practically everyone who will listen that her senior prom date ditched her because she couldn't slow-dance. Lolo Jones is on a mission of redemption.

"Every race is different," Jones says. "There's going to be something that happens that you're going to have to adjust for, something that tries to stress you out, and you just have to stay calm. But that, I think, will be a huge advantage for me. Athletes, we're used to having to step it up for competition." When I ask if she's prepared for the possibility of getting voted off the show first, she lowers the shades and stares at me like I've just run over her cat. "Dude, that would be awful."

Keo Motsepe, the sinewy South African who is Lolo's professional dance partner this season, arrives, and the two head into the studio to rehearse their cha-cha. Jones certainly looks the part of a dancer -- tall and lean, her body all sharp angles, a tangle of cheekbones, clavicles, knees and ribs. But then the music starts and her confidence leaks like the air from a punctured tire. If you saw her in the Olympics, you've seen it before: Jones breaking stride, losing rhythm, a progressive panic gripping her body, stiffening her movements, slowing her down. Keo tries to keep her focused ("C'mon! Open, hit, open, hit, cha-cha-cha!"), but with each passing attempt, she visibly stiffens. "I just feel so awkward in the opening," Jones confesses, fidgeting with her ponytail for the 11th time.

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Three days later, Jones watches as Randy Couture, the burly former MMA fighter, rehearses his fox trot in the ballroom where the show will be broadcast live. It's her first glimpse of the other 12 contestants' routines, and she looks sick. It's like being the Jaguars and feeling great about your playbook, then stumbling into the Patriots' practice.

Sitting by the dance floor, Henry Byalikov, one of the show's troupe dancers, has been evaluating the couples. He was voted off first last season with swimmer Diana Nyad, so he knows the potential embarrassment of an early exit. "Off the bat, Lolo would seem to have a pretty good disposition as a dancer, because she's used to moving fast and jumping," he says. "But the crossover for athletes to dance is always a bit touch and go, because the way we move our bodies, it's not about power. It's about finesse."

Couture and Michael Waltrip, the NASCAR driver, are the other athletes in the cast for the show's 19th season. They're looser than Lolo about the whole thing, more c'est la vie. When I ask Waltrip his biggest strength, he's quick with a line: "I have nice hips." Adds Couture: "Obviously, in dancing, nobody's punching me in the face, so I'm not too worried about it."

And so it is that the night of the premiere, Lolo and Keo dance fourth, and her performance starts bad ... before it turns worse. Jones misses her opening cue (which she will blame on the producers -- as she was, in the day, wont to blame poor races on false starts), and from there she's like a deer in the headlights, if that deer were also visibly counting steps in its head. The judges are, predictably, brutal. ("Lolo? That was more like 'Uh-oh,'" says one.) Jones shoulders the blame, but her flat affect and facial expressions for the remainder of the show, ranging from sad to furious, doom her. Social media is vicious. A typical tweet, courtesy of @ABRACCO: "@lolojones OMG YOU SUCKED... You and your sour puss face! Hopefully you get voted off week 1." 

The following night, Lolo Jones is the first celebrity bounced from "Dancing With the Stars."

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"I thrive on pressure. But it's one thing to go take dance classes at your local ballroom studio -- it's a completely different story to do it in front of 20 million people."
-- Natalie Coughlin, 12-time Olympic medalist swimmer, eliminated in Week 5 of "DWTS" Season 9

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AS A PREMISE, "Dancing With the Stars" is, by definition, slightly absurd: Celebrities pair up with professional dancers. After 10 weeks, a winner emerges. Said winner receives a sparkling disco-ball trophy -- and, if lucky, a movie role on the Hallmark Channel.

It is a months-long grind, wrapped in upheaval. But of the many peculiar things about "DWTS," perhaps the most peculiar is that of the dozens of reality shows currently polluting our airwaves, it is, by far, the one athletes seem the most eager to do. Over the past 10 years, 48 of them have laced up their dancing shoes, an eclectic roster of greats and almost-greats: NFL legends Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Warren Sapp, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin; boxers Evander Holyfield, Floyd Mayweather, Laila Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard; snowboarder Louie Vito; NBA baller Rick Fox; hockey left winger Sean Avery; Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Shawn Johnson, to name a few. As a demographic, they perform surprisingly well: In the first 19 seasons (there are two a year; the 20th is ongoing, with the finale airing Monday the 18th at 8:00 p.m. on ABC), athletes have won the show eight times and finished second another five. Of course, it's one thing for the then-Chad Ochocinco to do the show -- he's loud and showy, like a running joke told only to himself. It's another for Martina Navratilova to traipse out in red fringe and jive.

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"Nothing can prepare you for what occurs on the show. You're always miked, always have two people filming you. Every week they're trying to capture as much content as possible for these production packages: you fighting, or you falling on your ass, or falling in love, or something -- some kind of drama, which sells. By Week 7, I was saying, 'I don't know if this is healthy.' You'd get tired, exhausted, you couldn't absorb the information, and they'd be like, 'Why don't you get it?' And I'd say, 'I'm trying my best -- I want to get it over with as fast as you do!'"

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