‘The Challenge 36’ Winner Marks Major Milestone for the Show

The 36th season of The Challenge came to an end on Wednesday night. After a grueling final competition, CT Tamburello and Amber Borzotra emerged as the winners of The Challenge: Double Agents. Not only was Borzotra’s win significant as she won the series on her rookie season, but it also marks an important milestone for the series for one particular reason.

Borzotra’s Challenge win is significant as she is the first African-American winner on the series in over a decade. The last time that an African-American competitor won The Challenge was back in 2008 when Nehemiah Clark, who is currently competing on The Challenge: All-Stars, won The Challenge: Gauntlet III. Borzotra was one of the many rookies who was tasked with competing on The Challenge for the first time this season. Prior to her appearance in the competition, she competed on the 16th season of Big Brother, which aired in 2014. She didn’t fare as well on Big Brother, as she was the fifth person evicted.

The current season of The Challenge: Double Agents originally premiered back in December 2020. While the season initially began with 30 competitors, after a series of eliminations (and more than a few disqualifications), only eight entered the famed final portion of the show — Tamburello and Borzotra, Kam Williams and Cory Wharton, Leroy Garrett and Nany Gonzalez, and Fessy Shafaat and Kaycee Clark.

The final proved to be one of the most challenging of all time given the extreme conditions in Iceland, which is where they filmed the season. Interestingly enough, Emer Harkin, The Challenge‘s showrunner, recently said on Us Weekly‘s podcast, Watch With Us: Challenge Edition, that they had to change the final at the last minute because of those very conditions.

“We were filming in Iceland and in a hurricane, and a hurricane hadn’t hit Iceland since 20 years prior. So, of course, it would hit just as we were filming our final,” the producer explained about the latest final challenge. “It was awesome, but also a really precarious position to be in as a producer because you’ve got to keep everybody safe and you want to deliver something that looks tremendous.” Harkin added that because of these extraordinary weather conditions, it was “one of the toughest finals we’ve ever done.” Disclosure: PopCulture is owned by ViacomCBS Streaming, a division of ViacomCBS.