‘Survivor’ Winner Injured in Season 50 Premiere, Forced to Exit Game

Survivor’s milestone 50^th season premiere ended in heartbreak for one Castaway.

Kyle Fraser, who won Survivor 48 in 2024, suffered an injury in Wednesday’s three-hour premiere.

It seemed like Fraser would be going far, even in the first episode, as he joined multiple alliances and quietly learned about the season’s Billie Eilish Idol before most people. Unfortunately, Fraser ended up tearing his Achilles tendon during an immunity challenge and was forced to be medically evacuated. In an exit interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he confirmed it was a “full tear” in the Achilles, and he had to get immediate surgery when he returned.

Eight months out, though, Fraser says his Achilles is “recovering.” He continued, “I’m about eight months out. I just started to run a few weeks ago, so the next step will be sustained running, then sprinting. After that, the world’s my oyster.”

It wasn’t an easy decision for Fraser to leave Survivor, especially only one episode in. He admitted he went back and forth with host Jeff Probst and Dr. Joe Rowles, head of Survivor’s medical team, “for quite some time, and that’s what I wanted to know” in terms of whether he could continue on or not. “I was like, ‘If it’s anything but that, I’m staying. But if it’s something that could eventually cause harm down the line,’ then I was like, ‘I got to get out of here, I guess.’”

Fraser recalled what had happened during the immunity challenge, including what wasn’t shown. “Q [Burdette] ran up the wall first, then I ran up, got up there myself, and then Colby [Donaldson] was sort of the engine of this thing,” he said. “Q and I were pulling people up from the top, and Colby was picking people up from the bottom. That’s a really tough job. I think Colby was pretty gassed, and now the wall is also covered in mud, so it’s just a lot of force that needs to be put into the wall. And Colby’s a stud athlete, but he’s in his 50s. So I had to go down and help him up, and then essentially I had to try to run up the wall again with the mud.”

“I had two more attempts, so what you saw was my second attempt, but that’s actually not where I tore my Achilles,” Fraser continued. “It was on the third attempt, which the doctor told me was from putting the foot into the wall back to back to back in quick succession. That, unfortunately, forced the rupture.”

It’s disappointing that Fraser’s Survivor 50 run ended a lot sooner than he had hoped, but he has no regrets with the experience, both on Season 48 and Season 50. “I’m satisfied with both seasons, 48 and 50, for diametrically different reasons, but I’ve learned so much from both of those seasons,” he explained. “I just love the game. I’m looking forward to my wife having this daughter, us raising her, and spending time with my family, and slowing down my life right now. Because it’s been so go, go, go.”

“But in a different chapter of my life, kind of like what just happened for some of these players on 50, the older members of the cast,” Fraser said. “I would love to have that for myself. I’d love to see what a little bit of a buffer could do for me as well.”