STRICTLY WINNER KAREN CARNEY SAYS 'IT WAS TRUE' IN SHOW 'FIX' ADMISSION

Karen Carney has said that 'it was true' that Strictly Come Dancing would be what 'fixed' her confidence after opening up about her struggles.

The former footballer was among the 15 famous faces to sign up for the BBC One dance contest last year and back in September, she was seen being paired with professional dancer Carlos Gu, who got a celebrity partner after missing out on competing the previous year.

Lioness Karen quickly showed promise in week one when she became the first footballer to top the Strictly leaderboard in 18 years, It was then in December, weeks after their first performance together, that Karen and Carlos were seen lifting the show's coveted Glitterball trophy.

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They were crowned the 2025 series champions after a tense - and emotional - final of the dance contest, which also marked the last live show Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly hosted together, after Karen and Carlos went up against Amber Davies and Nikita Kuzmin, and George Clarke and Alexis Warr for the title.

Now, Karen has admitted that weeks on from the triumphant moment, her win still hasn't sunk in. Reuniting with former teammate and podcast co-host Jill Scott on their Long Story Short podcast, Jill welcomed her back and said: "I can't believe you won Strictly. Can you believe it?"

Karen replied: "No. I can't believe it either. It feels like a bit of a blur though." Jill then asked: "Do you wake up on a morning and just stroke your little ball and go, 'I won Strictly!'?" But Karen insisted: "Absolutely not. How weird would that be?"

She also explained how she went on the show to help her confidence, which she previously explained had been knocked when she became a female football pundit. Since retiring in 2019, the former Chelsea and Arsenal player has become a regular football pundit, appearing on TNT Sports, Sky Sports and ITV Sport, but told how she had it "quite bad" as a woman talking about men’s football.

Speaking to Jill, Karen said: " I think even as a player though that say that same fake it till you make it. You're not 100% confident all the time but I think, probably the last five or six years, and I slightly explained on the show as to why my confidence had been knocked and it was really accurate. I was struggling for a long, long time.

"But it was really bizarre that I I thought to to grow your confidence, sometimes people tend to do small steps and build their way up to something. My only mentality and my only thought was that isn't going to work for me. In my heart and in my gut, I always knew it would be Strictly.

"I always knew that they were the people that was the environment for me to go and if I could do a cha cha cha and walk down a floor in a dress or a strut that I'd never done before in front of millions of people, I felt I could go and really grow as a person. That for me, I wanted to dive in. That was the only way I thought I could fix my confidence and it was true. Yeah, there's no other way I don't think I could have got more confident."

2026-02-10T08:43:36Z