‘Dancing With the Stars’: Christie Brinkley Brands Daughter Sailor’s Elimination as ‘Unfair’

Christie Brinkley is still seething after seeing her daughter Sailor Brinkley-Cook get eliminated from Dancing With The Stars surprisingly early exit at the end of last week’s episode. The supermodel told Entertainment Tonight on Monday in Italy it was “unfair” to see her 21-year-old daughter end her dancing journey in tears. Brinkley-Cook and pro dance partner Val Chmerkovskiy were eliminated in Week 6, even though she was in a three-way tie for the highest score.

“So, what was going through my mind when Sailor was eliminated on Dancing With the Stars is probably left best unspoken,” Brinkley told Entertainment Tonight. “I like to stick on the high road. I like to look for the positives and what we can be grateful for, and there was a lot to be grateful for. I was so, so, SO happy to see my daughter discover a new talent that she didn’t know she had before, and to gain so much confidence.”

Brinkley said she “could cry” while thinking about how her daughter’s tenure on the show ended.

“It was very unfair. Sailor impressed me with her ability to rise above everything that went down that evening,” she continued. “I didn’t need to say a word. She just… I think from the way she was raised, she knew what to do. I was just so proud of her.”

The Oct. 21 DWTS episode ended with Brinkley-Cook and singer Ally Brooke as the bottom two vote-getters, so the jduges had to pick between the two even though they both did well. They chose to save Brooke though, and Brinkley-Cook was left in tears.

“She just told me that things like this happen in life and everything leads to some other great door opening,” Brinkley-Cook told PEOPLE about what her mom told her last week. “Our team name is ‘SailaV’ — c’est la vie, such is life. This stuff happens!”

Brinkley herself broke her silence on Instagram, sharing some words of encouragement to her daughter.

“You don’t need to be on a tv show to keep smiling and dancing… and that’s the ultimate prize! Here are a few random happy snippets of videos I shot from your rehearsals guaranteed to put a smile on everyone’s face,” Brinkley wrote.

Brinkley-Cook was not even originally supposed to be on DWTS. At first, Brinkley was supposed to dance with Chmerkovskiy, but she suffered a broken arm during rehearsals. Brinkley-Cook stepped in just three days before the season started.

“I loved this experience so much. I loved going to the studio and being able to do something I never thought I could do. I just want to say thank you to everyone who supported me because I know I’m not a big star, but I was so happy to have done something that I was so afraid of,” Brinkley-Cook said on Good Morning America after she was eliminated.

Dancing With The Stars airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo credit: ABC