Winning a season of MTV's The Challenge is never easy, but when did these women emerge victorious when no one expected them to?
Winning an entire season of MTV's reality competition The Challenge is an amazing feat regardless of the circumstances. But undeniably, some victories are more impressive, memorable, or surprising than others.
A lot of women who have fought their way through a Challenge have become legends in their own right. But there have also been many female players who emerged as the winners of a season when everyone was expecting someone else to win, or at the very least no one was ever expecting them to win.
Generally speaking, it's never much of a shock when Challenge vet Darrell Taylor wins a Challenge, especially in his early years, as Darrell won the first four Challenges he competed in. However, he and his partner Aviv's victory in Fresh Meat was still a bit of a surprise.
While they were a good team, they ultimately didn't have a very standout season. And while Aviv clearly proved that she was capable of running a final in the end, she didn't really distinguish herself as a contender until the end of Fresh Meat.
The Rookie team in general did not have an easy go of things throughout the entire season of The Gauntlet 3, but Jillian arguably had the hardest road to navigate out of all of the female competitors.
If Big Easy hadn't collapsed then Jill wouldn't have won anyway, but the ultimately Rookies scored the victory. And, although Jill had to survive three elimination rounds during the game, she came up the winner every time and joined her team for the final win.
Winning a Challenge is an accomplishment under any circumstance, but it is drastically more difficult when there is only one single person who will be declared the victor of the entire season.
Everyone knows that Cara Maria is a Challenge beast, but the fact that she managed to defeat every other competitor in an incredibly stacked season is still surprising. She managed to outplay incredibly tough competitors like Kam, Bananas, and Zach and become the first sole winner of The Challenge.
Some viewers might feel like she did what was necessary to win the final, while others might argue that Ev betrayed everything that she claimed to be about in order to conquer The Island.
But regardless of perspective, Evelyn pulled off one of the most shocking boss moves in Challenge history when she decided to align with the people who had been her enemies all season and essentially strongarm them into ditching one of their team members so she could join them on their boat.
It's one thing to become a Challenge champ, but it's doubly impressive to win when no one expected it, and it's even harder when a champion is working on a team that was working to get rid of them at one point. But Dee managed to emerge victorious despite all of these adverse circumstances.
No one was expecting Team UK to win by the time they got to the final, but the fact that Dee was still among them when the team actually threw a daily in the hopes of getting rid of her was even more mind-blowing.
Although Paula had made it to three finals in the seven seasons of The Challenge that she did prior to Rivals, she had never actually won. She actually became somewhat notorious for her losing streak.
But, as Paula herself would admit, she apparently had a knack for starting beef with the right people, and she had a stroke of luck when she and Evelyn were paired up for the first Rivals season. And thus, Paula finally broke her losing curse.
Katie was universally considered to be the worst player on the Road Rules team in The Inferno, to the point that Road Rules did everything they could to get rid of her while Real World did whatever possible to keep her on the team.
However, all of the drama over Katie's presence wound up being for naught. Not only did Katie make it to the very end and win with her team, but she actually was one of the main reasons Road Rules wound up winning.
It's always impressive when a player wins a Challenge in their first few seasons of appearing on the show, as many don't finally become champs until they've been competing for half a dozen seasons.
But, what makes Ashley "Millionaire" Mitchell's victory in Invasion of the Champions all the more impressive is right there in the title of the season. Ashley didn't just beat her other competitors, she beat players who are known as the greatest to ever play the game when her Challenge career had barely started.
Plenty of Challenge contestants compete in the series many times over, but there are a few one-hit wonders sprinkled in among the victors as well.
And despite the fact that Kenny and Laurel had one of the most dominant runs in Challenge history during Fresh Meat 2, the ultimate winners of the season wound up being Landon and Carley. Ironically, Carley was the last picked out of all of the female Fresh Meat options too.
It's pretty rare for anyone to win their rookie season of The Challenge, but typically those that do prove themselves to be standout competitors throughout the competition.
While Big Brother 16's Amber Borzotra certainly wasn't a slouch in the dailies, she wasn't a particularly dominant player, and Fessy actually went out of his way to ditch her as a partner. But Amber ultimately demonstrated that she was designed to win finals, as she won Double Agents with CT and was leaving him in her dust half the time during the race.
