Michaela Strachan has been injured just weeks before Dancing on Ice begins.
The Springwatch presenter will compete on the ITV skating competition with professional Mark Hanretty when the show launches on Sunday (12 January).
ITV’s popular competition will feature 11 new celebrity contestants, including Sir Steve Redgrave, Coronation Street star Sam Aston and former Traitors contestants Mollie Pearce
However, Strachan has admitted that she suffered her worst injury just weeks before she began training.
The TV personality told The Mirror:“I’ve got some good bruises. I actually had an injury before I got on the ice,” she said. “I sprained my ankle quite badly two months before we started. I was on crutches.”
Her injury occurred when she sprained her ankle while out running with her partner, Nick Chevallier. Initially thinking she was not hurt, Michaela said she “hobbled back down the mountain. Meanwhile,” she added, “my partner is going, ‘You’re doing Dancing on Ice! This is really not good. You’re injured before you even hit the ice.’”
Having completed a stint as a contestant on ITV’s Splash in 2014, Strachan’s appearance will mark her second TV reality competition. While she is keen to embrace the challenge, her partner Chevallier does not share the same enthusiasm.
“He hasn’t been very encouraging,” she said. “He just said that I’m mad. He’s South African so he doesn’t know Dancing on Ice. When I showed him all the accidents on YouTube, he thought I was really mad.”
In the audience to support Strachan will be the couple’s son Oliver, 19, as well as her mum, brother, and stepdaughter. Living in South Africa, Nick does not currently have tickets, but the former Countryfile star said he might later attend depending on how far she gets.
“Certainly my mum is coming, my brother’s coming, my son’s coming, my stepdaughter’s coming” Michaela said. “A lot of people are. We have made a plan for them to be able to watch it and have a party back at home in South Africa.”
While the show is on air, the TV presenter will be busy juggling her Dancing on Ice commitments along with filming the new series of Winterwatch, which airs later this month.
“It’s 12-hour days without the training,” Michaela explained, “so it will be 15-hour days with it. Then I’ll finish a live show at nine o’clock and drive down to the studio on Saturday for Sunday. But I like a challenge.”
Confessing she would be “gutted” to be voted off the competition early, Michaela said that the show is “really emotional”. “It’s been intense and has taken over our lives, but we’ve loved it. It’s been a lot of work and to go in the first week, you think, ‘Jeez.’”
Dancing on Ice returns to screens on Sunday at 6:30pm on ITV.
