‘The Challenge’ Winner Jordan Wiseley Discusses Five-Minute Headstart Despite Mega Lead In Part One Of Final

By now, fans of The Challenge understand that the finals are heavily edited, especially given the real-time duration of the competitions. A lot of the time, the final will appear to be a much closer race than it actually is, and War of the Worlds 2 finalist Jordan Wiseley is now revealing that was the case for Season 34. The three-time Challenge champion caught up with Hollywood Life to discuss the final, where he claimed Team U.K. had a huge lead over Team U.S.

“Based on our calculation, I bet we had a good hour, hour and a half on the Americans,” Jordan admitted.

Despite having a mega lead for the first leg of the race, it really didn’t matter when it came to day two. Team U.S. eventually caught up with their rivals at a camp where they could rest for the night. In the morning, the second part of the final began and host T.J. Lavin announced that Team U.K. would only be getting a five-minute headstart on the next portion of the final, which many fans felt was completely unfair. This headstart wasn’t enough to keep Team U.S. from catching up to Jordan’s group at the puzzle, where the two teams battled it out just before crossing the finish line.

“I’ve had this exact thing happen on other finals, where you put in all this work for the first 24 hours [and then it doesn’t matter]. We had put this pace on them that just defeated them. They were so demoralized when they came walking up to the snake pit. Had we gotten to keep that…it was over, not even close,” Jordan said.

The champion then admitted he had a rush of anxiety alongside team member Chris “CT” Tamburello when they were trying to solve the tangram puzzle alongside Team U.S.

“I was just waiting to hear the other team start screaming. So that was the most stressful part of the entire game,” he continued.

Thankfully for Jordan, Team U.K. solved the puzzle first and jumped aboard four kayaks to a yacht where T.J. announced them as the million-dollar winners of the season. Team U.S. wasn’t far behind, as both groups were in the water paddling at the same time

The Challenge: War of the Worlds 2 reunion begins this Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on MTV. And according to spoilers, Jordan and Cara Maria Sorbello will debate the lead in the first leg of the race, with Cara claiming it was much closer than Jordan is suggesting.