‘Dancing With The Stars’: Noah Galloway On His Third Place Finish

Noah Galloway didn’t get the golden mirrorball on “Dancing with the Stars,” but he still feels like he won.

“I definitely feel that way,” Noah told Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson after Tuesday night’s “Dancing with the Stars” finale. “I mean, I came into this thinking I’d be the first or second person to go home, and we came all the way to the finals and made third out of, what was it, 12? I’m happy with that.”

Rumer Willis and Valentin Chmerkovskiy scored Season 20’s big prize, edging out Riker Lynch and Allison Holker. Noah said he picked Rumer from the start, until Riker started to show some major moves a few weeks in.

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“I called her the winner [during] Week 1. And every couple weeks I told her that. I would pull her aside and say, ‘This is yours to win.’ And then, by Week 3 and 4, I saw how impressive Riker was and… by Week 8 and 9, I didn’t know who would win between Riker and Rumer,” Noah said. “So to stand there and see the two of them, battling it out for first, when we were waiting to hear their names, I wasn’t surprised that that’s how it ended up. What I was impressed with was that I even made it to third.”

Noah was hard on himself during the season, and told Shaun he “never felt like” he “was doing good.”

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His pro partner, Sharna Burgess, said he may have been tough on himself, but in the end, he created something special in the ballroom.

“He’s his own worst critic,” she said. “But there have been moments that he’s looked back on and thought, ‘That was amazing,’ and one was our freestyle [Monday] night and there have been a couple of others through the season and I think that is just such a beautiful thing for him to take away, that can he forever now see his story told through dance and see himself telling his own story in a different way and I think it’s beautiful.”

— Jolie Lash