Robert Irwin wins US Dancing with the Stars 10 years after Bindi Irwin’s record-breaking victory

Robert Irwin has won Dancing with the Stars (US).

Battling through a heated, three-round, three-hour live season finale in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening (Wednesday AEDT), Irwin ultimately overcame a rib injury to, with the help of his professional dancer partner Witney Carson, beat influencer Alix Earle and Val Chmerkovskiy in the quest to secure the coveted Len Goodman Mirrorball trophy.

As confetti streamed over the ballroom, Irwin was asked what the victory – which has come a decade after his sister, Bindi Irwin, won the competition with Derek Hough – meant to him.

“My sister said it best, ‘Thank you for changing my life!’” he responded through tears. Carson added, “I’m so grateful for Robert.” The duo were then handed their Mirrorball trophies, before being lifted in the air by the show’s cast and professional troupe, who had flooded the dance floor.

“TWO MIRRORBALLS NOW CALL AUSTRALIA ZOO HOME!!!! Congratulations and all the love in the world to [Irwin] and [Carson],” Bindi wrote on Instagram. “What. A. Night.”

It was a nail-biting finale that saw Irwin’s win plagued with moments of doubt. In the days leading up to the live broadcast event, Irwin had battled rib pain, which became progressively worse the more he rehearsed – so much so that Irwin was concerned about injuring himself further during his first routine: the judges’ choice quickstep to Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Australian rockers Jet.

That saw Irwin and Carson earn a score of 29/30 points, putting them behind Earle and actress Elaine Hendrix. Although judge Bruno Tonioli said Irwin’s routine showed he had the “power of a lion”, judge Carrie Ann Inaba docked the duo a point because she did not “want to give [the trophy] to anyone who doesn’t deserve it”.

The stakes were raised when Irwin drew the cha cha – the dance style that was “absolutely the one that I don’t want”, he said in a pre-recorded package – and given mere minutes to prepare an unrehearsed routine with Carson to DNCE’s Cake by the Ocean for the instant dance round.

“I’m nervous for this instant dance,” Irwin noted. But there was no need – the duo, after Irwin once again ripped his shirt off mid-routine, walked away with a perfect score, and an apt summary from Tonioli: “You are on fire.”

The problem was, both Earle and Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles had earned a perfect score in the second round, putting Earle one point above Irwin in technical points and Chiles tied with the 21-year-old Wildlife Warrior.

All three went on to earn perfect scores in the third and final round – the fan-favourite, go-big-or-go-home freestyle routine, which Irwin performed to a mash-up of Sydney-born Sam Sparro’s Black & Gold and Avicii’s The Nights – meaning Irwin was relying on the public vote to win the championship.

And that’s when we knew he had it in the bag.

“I wouldn’t be here without dad and his legacy,” said Irwin, wearing Steve Irwin’s old shirt as a good luck charm and in tears, in a pre-recorded package aired moments before he took the stage for his final dance. “And I really want to make him proud with this dance … I wish he could see it. I wish he could be here.”

Hough, who gave Irwin and Carson’s freestyle 10/10, told Irwin: “You are a dancer, you are a phenomenal human being.” The judge and former professional dance partner reminisced on meeting Irwin when he was 11 years old, in Los Angeles while then-17-year-old Bindi competed in Season 21.

“That’s where that dream began … I never thought it would become this,” Irwin said a decade on of watching Bindi in the ballroom.

Hough said he looks to the Irwin family as examples not just because of their conservation work, but for how to be as a person.

By the time co-hosts Julianne Hough and Alfonso Ribeiro pushed the audience to lock in their final votes, Irwin’s fans were more than primed – but Irwin wasn’t leaving anything to chance. A pre-recorded good luck message from Gladiator’s Russell Crowe was a final call to arms: “At my signal, unleash hell.”

It worked: Julianne and Ribeiro later said more than 72 million votes had been received during the episode, more than double last season’s finale. Across the whole season, more than half a billion votes were sent in.

A look back at Robert Irwin’s magic moments on the ballroom floor

Irwin, whose emotional turn on the American reality competition captured hearts and minds across the globe, had been heavily favoured to win the Season 34 championship since the moment he started rehearsals – after stopping to visit his father’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – in August.

It was the unexpected elimination of frontrunner Whitney Leavitt (of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives infamy) last week, however, that telegraphed victory was firmly within Irwin’s grasp.

Although Irwin entered the contest with no prior dance experience, he did not come unprepared. That he has “win” in his name (handy for his #TeamIrWINit social media campaign), and a roster of heavy hitters (including Bindi, Prince William, and Crowe) ready and willing to be deployed to court audience votes, were only two weapons in his stacked arsenal.

What also helped was the fact Irwin leant into his post-Bonds ad sex appeal and was happy to keep ripping his shirt off mid-bop, while simultaneously managing to maintain his family-friendly image. (The latter thanks to countless interviews exalting his late father’s legacy, and having his mother, Terri Irwin, as well as his sister on-hand to make choreographed cameos on the dance floor.)

Just how many of the record number of public votes Disney/American Broadcasting Company says this season has attracted is due to the Irwin marketing machine is impossible to quantify.

What’s undeniable is that before Television City Studios’ cameras started rolling for September 16’s premiere, Irwin already had a main character storyline locked and loaded.

His poetic victory, now confirmed after being written in the stars, comes exactly 10 years after Bindi, then aged 17, won Season 21 in 2015, securing a record-breaking eight perfect scores in her pursuit with Hough.

But to ignore the stops Irwin has pulled out in the ballroom these past two months is to do him, and his dancing skills, a disservice.

For almost every thirsty comment about his tanned abs on social media was praise for how seriously he was taking the boogie – he actually points his toes! His movements are sharp and precise! His technique is clean! – so much so that tabloids ran stories alleging he had been taking dance classes in secret for two years.

That conspiracy theory took flight nine weeks into the 11-week season, when Irwin and Carson earned 40 out of 40 points from judges Hough, Inaba and Tonioli, and guest judge Tom Bergeron.

It was the first perfect score of this year’s competition, and was earned by Irwin and Carson for their foxtrot to Leona Lewis’ Footprints in the Sand.

That performance was inspired by Bindi and Hough’s freestyle routine to the same song a decade earlier, so it was only fitting that Irwin called in the big guns to stick the landing.

Bindi’s on-stage sway with her brother at the end of his November 13 foxtrot had Bergeron almost in tears, and Hough calling Irwin “this generation’s beacon of hope”. But Irwin’s dancing hasn’t completely escaped critique.

Although Hough told Irwin that “every fibre of [his] body dances” after his Viennese waltz to Prince’s WOW one week later, the judge took issue with his frame. He ultimately gave Irwin and Carson a nine (out of 10), making them one point shy of a perfect score. (Though they did earn 30/30 points that week for their jive to Baby I’m a Star).

Terri’s cameo on the dance floor in Week Five – when Irwin’s contemporary routine to Phil Collins’ You’ll Be in My Heart was performed to honour his mother – also wasn’t enough to secure Irwin a perfect score.

Two couples – Irwin and Carson, and Earle and Chmerkovskiy – walked away with 35/40, and Dylan Efron’s routine to brother Zac Efron’s song Rewrite the Stars secured him Dedication Night’s highest score: 36/40.

What Irwin wrote on Instagram two weeks later, ahead of his Halloween Night performance, signalled why the competition meant so much to him regardless of scores, or if he and his other “protective older sister” (Carson) won the trophy on November 26.

“Wish I could tell this kid that one day he’d finally get to live out that dream! Beyond grateful for this experience, it has already been everything I hoped for and more,” Irwin wrote alongside a photo of his 11-year-old self holding Bindi’s Mirrorball Trophy. “Lots more fun ahead! See you tonight!”

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