The cramped gymnasium on the first floor of Newtownard’s leisure centre had been due to hold a pole-dancing class last night. Instead it witnessed Northern Ireland’s entire political world turned on its head.
A keep-fit suite, with sports equipment neatly pushed to one side, certainly provided an incongruous setting for the announcement of Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson's stunning defeat to Naomi Long.
But for an Alliance Party candidate who was a keen fencer at school, it hardly mattered where her most famous duel was won.
Moments after the first box from the east Belfast constituency was prized open in the counting centre downstairs rumours of an upset start to brew.
Alliance, a party founded on the cross community ethos, had never won a Westminster seat on Northern Ireland's deeply divided electoral map, but the collective expression on the faces of the party's tally checkers indicated that history beckoned.
They rushed back and forth frantically trying to establish if the unlikely story unfolding along with the ballot papers at their desk was unfolding everywhere else.
It was.
And if their own clipboards didn't confirm it, the increasingly sullen disposition of the DUP contingent did.
At this stage Mrs Long, Belfast's incumbent lord mayor, had decamped to an impromptu base in one of the centre's empty changing rooms.
Surrounded by half-opened, coin-operated lockers, she sat far from the frenzy engulfing the rest of the building, no doubt wondering if the impossible was about happen.
"I'm leaving the counting to everyone else," she said. "I just couldn't face that at the moment."
Mr Robinson, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen.
His son Gareth and daughter Rebekah tallied feverishly along with the rest of the DUP team, but even they knew the signs weren't good.
This was the first time Northern Ireland had counted its general election results through the night, and the late hour seemed to add to the drama as declaration approached around 1am.
The candidates were told the result privately moments before the official notification and the shockwaves reached the upstairs gym long before the returning officer did.
Her face flushed with emotion, Mrs Long stopped briefly at the door and took several deep breaths before entering. Battling her way through the throng of well wishers and interview hungry reporters, she hadn't even reached the stage before the winner was announced.
She had got a lot further than the outgoing MP though, who was still to appear.
Finally the DUP leader emerged, harbouring no illusions about what awaited him. He forced a weak smile, but it could not hide his discomfort.
"You should always be careful what you wish for in politics," he said wryly after pointing out that he had personally not wanted to run again for Westminster.
For Mrs Long, the flame-haired fencer who had just vanquished a seemingly unbeatable opponent, her wish really had come true. "It feels great," she smiled when asked what it was like to notch the biggest underdog victory in Northern Ireland's political history. "It feels just great."