Australian Ninja Warrior’s Final Course Was So Brutal No One Could Beat It

Well that was an intense two weeks.

The first season of ‘Australian Ninja Warrior‘, the show that wowed an increasingly unfit nation –  63.4% of Australians are overweight according to the ABS – and probably motivated at least one person to get off their arse and go outside, is officially over. 
It’s been a huge ratings success, scoring 2.3 million viewers for its first episode, and has inspired enough Twitter controversy to fuel a small wind farm. We didn’t get Roy & H.G. as commentators though. Sad! 
What we did get was a Grand Final course that even elite athletes could not overcome – and even if they did manage one stage they’d probably be struck down anyway. 
Australia noticed: 

Eight of the 21 total contestants did in fact make it through by the skin of their teeth, but none managed to conquer Stage Two. 
27-year-old Fred Dorrington was almost disqualified because his foot may have just barely brushed the water in Stage One – just like he was from the British season last year. But he ended up making it the furthest, the fastest in the second stage, and won Oz’s first season. He had finished the first stage with more than 20 seconds to spare. 

He did not achieve ‘Total Victory’, which requires completing the final stage of the course – although in his defence the first time an American pulled that off was in season seven. 
Fun story: Geoff Britten became the first American Ninja Warrior by completing stage four in 2015, only to be surpassed by another contestant, Isaac Caldiero, who also finished the course, but did it faster. He went home with a cool million, Britten with nuthin’. Brutal. 

Dorrington ran out of time clinging to the Unstable Bridge in Stage Two:

   

Poor 24-year-old Tom O’Halloran was also a contender, having completed the first stage with almost a minute up his sleeve, but fell from the same bridge with less than three seconds left to finish his run. 

And 23-year-old Ashlin Herbert just couldn’t beat the Salmon Ladder after he had finished the first stage in the fasted time, with one minute and 20 seconds to go. 

Poor bloke.
Still, the people have spoken and they’re decidedly into ‘Australian Ninja Warrior‘. And Dave Hughes is shook. 


Photo: Twitter.

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