What Was the Easiest Challenge Season to Win?

Over the past decade, we’ve seen The Challenge get significantly harder. In 2003, we saw 8 Road Rulers win The Inferno. This was 40% of the competitors that season. Meanwhile, War of the Worlds was won by Turbo: one of the 34 competitors who showed up. This means 2.9% of competitors won that season.

Does this make The Inferno the easiest season to win? Perhaps, if you go strictly by numbers. There are other seasons that allowed competitors to skate by and rewarded poor performances.

There are a few seasons that were exceptionally easy to win, at least when compared to other seasons. This ignores the first four seasons of The Challenge were eliminations were not required.

For the Majority of the Cast

The Gauntlet 2 would have to be the easiest. There were 15 proper eliminations, so by design 53% would make it to the final. Of course, Jo quit, so only half the competitors saw the end.

People like Kina and Alton had a really hard time, because they’d had to go into many eliminations. Meanwhile the bulk of the finalists could avoid elimination with mediocre performances. That’s how we got Katie, Robin, Randy, Ibis, and David in the final.

Unless you were a team captain, The Gauntlet 2 was probably the easiest season to win. Not only was getting to the final easy, but the final required no skill.

If You’re a Male

The Gauntlet 1. This season did not divide elimination by gender, so anyone could get vote in at any point. As a result, 19 of the 28 elimination slots were filled by females. This means 68% of the Gauntlet competitors were female while only 32% were male.

50% of the cast made the final, which is lower than the 60% on the Inferno seasons. However, the fact that sacrificing females was a viable strategy proved that males had an easier path to the end. The final itself was fairly challenging, though mild by today’s standards.

Overall

The Inferno seasons are going to be the easiest based on the numbers, but Inferno 3 would probably be the easiest season to win.

60% of the cast made the final, but this season made winning Lifeshields easier than ever before. Unlike the Inferno 1 & 2, a competitor on both teams won the Lifeshield. If it was a male Inferno week, a male always won. If it was a female Inferno week, a female always won. This allowed the strongest competitors to obtain safety fairly regularly.

On other Inferno seasons, winning the Lifeshield was harder. This is because the competition was not gendered based on the upcoming Inferno. As a result, males lost to Veronica on the Inferno 1 and no female won a Lifeshield on Inferno 2. Inferno 3 made it easier for nominees to replace themselves, and as a result, the weaker competitor would see eliminations more frequently.