“The Challenge: Cutthroat” winner Tori Deal pushed back on the accusations that the final competition was “rigged” in her team’s favor.
“Rigged makes me feel like I didn’t have to actually run 27 miles,” she exclusively told Page Six after the season finale on Wednesday. “I would love it to feel like it was rigged and effortless. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
Deal, 33, said the claims about how the final race played out “take away from the amount of work it took to actually cross that finish line.”
The Season 42 finale sparked controversy after the Orange Team — Deal, Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, CT Tamburello, Michele Fitzgerald and Will Gagnon — wasn’t penalized when Tamburello required medical assistance in the extreme heat.
Tamburello was evaluated and allowed to rejoin his team at a later checkpoint with no time penalty, allowing them to beat the Gray Team, comprised of Adrienne Naylor, Alexis Lete, Cassidy Clark and Cara Maria Sorbello.
Fans online accused production of rigging the competition so the veteran franchise players on the Orange Team could win.
But Deal told us that since the show moved from MTV to Paramount+ for this season, the final race’s rules were unclear to all the contestants.
“We don’t really know those things going into the game,” she explained. “We did know for sure that if somebody was medically DQed, that it would not affect the team. So I think that medical evaluation period is kind of like a buffer.
“It was like the medical evaluation periods still won’t affect because if it goes into medical DQ, well then that was unfair,” Deal continued. “But if this person ends up quitting, well then now their team is tanked anyway and they’re done. So I think that medical evaluation piece is what people should be looking at.”
The “Are You the One?” alum reiterated that they “don’t get rules explained” before the competitions, so they “kind of had to sit with what it was.”
The winning Orange Team collectively took home $550,000. Deal, as team captain, chose to split the money equally with her four teammates — though she playfully took a $1 “captain’s fee” from each of them.
Deal, now $110,004 richer, admitted she “couldn’t have imagined” taking all the money for herself.
“People are saying to me, Tori, why didn’t you steal the money from Bananas and give it to Sarah?” she said, referring to when Devenanzio famously stole $275,000 from Sarah Rice on “The Challenge: Rivals III” in 2016.
“And I’m like, well, I wasn’t there for that situation,” Deal continued. “And you know what, I wish Sarah had the opportunity to get it back for herself, but like I’m not gonna be the deliverer of somebody else’s karma. I’m working within my own.”
Deal also revealed she planned her “captain’s fee” twist three weeks beforehand.
“I just wanted to at least make them shake in their boots a bit,” she said about her team. “But they pretty much made me swear on my cat’s life that I wasn’t gonna steal any money from them. And once I did that, I was like, all right, I guess I’m gonna share it with you guys.”
“The Challenge” hasn’t been renewed yet for Season 43, and host T.J. Lavin recently said on Devenanzio’s podcastthat he doesn’t know when filming will resume, leading fans to speculate that the long-running show may get canceled.
Deal, who made her “Challenge” debut in 2017, told us that she’s in the dark about the show’s future.
“I have not gotten a call. I think that I’ve heard that a lot of other people haven’t,” she explained.
Deal said she’s “hopeful” about appearing on the show again, but “until I get a phone call or I’m on a plane, I’m not.”
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