Kiki Morris and Troy Cullen have won Australia’s first season of The Challenge.
Airing on multichannel 10 Shake and 10 Play, former Bachelor contestant Kiki and Ninja Warrior contestant Troy competed against Brittany Hockley, Ciarran Stott, Brooke Jowett and Conor Curran in the finale episode.
Kiki and Troy won the series after a series of endurance challenges that began with a late-night numeric puzzle and ended with a finish line sprint.
Taking home $100,000 prize money each, Kiki and Troy have also been granted the opportunity to compete in the world series of The Challenge: Global Championship in 2023, where they will compete against other winners from around the world.
The Challenge Australia, filmed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was hosted by Brihony Dawson. The show saw an algorithm randomly pair challengers to compete in gruelling physical contests, test strategies, survive eliminations, cutthroat alliances and steamy hook-ups to win daily challenges and eliminate their opponents.
Throughout the finale, the algorithm swapped out pairings, but each team member’s runtime was calculated individually, meaning the fastest male and fastest female contestant took out the crown.
After completing a puzzle, the contestants had to race to the first challenge, where they had to take turns sleeping in a tent.
The three final teams then had to cycle 100kms on a stationary bike, run to a river and collect puzzle pieces, recreate a puzzle from memory, navigate a plank and barrel obstacle, carry a series of tyres and stack them in order and, push a car across a field before racing to the finish line.
Last month, Mediaweek spoke to finalist Brittany Hockley about her time on the show. She said, “I was having a really hard time. There were some people on there that were just really horrible people, one in particular, but just really nasty people. And I just thought, “I’m too old for this, I don’t need to put myself in a position where someone can just belittle me and make me feel terrible.””
When asked why she didn’t leave the show, Hockley said that if she left, so did her partner of that week too.
“I didn’t want to be selfish like that and ruin someone else’s experience. I was dead set on leaving until they told me that I would have to take my partner with me.”