The Challenge contestant seriously injured in a freak accident

After thirty-eight seasons, MTV’s competition reality show The Challenge has run the gamut of extreme, well, challenges that beget bumps and bruises. But during part 1 of Wednesday’s two-part finale episode, contestant Olivia Kaiser pushed the show’s physical toll to a new limit, suffering a serious injury that left her hospitalized.

Each season of The Challenge takes structural cues from its subtitle, and this season, Ride Or Dies, places past contestants from other reality series into duos or teams. Kaiser (who reality TV die-hards may remember from Love Island USA) and her partner Horacio Gutiérrez Jr. was the only rookie pair to survive all the way to The Challenge’s 100-hour finale in Argentina this season.

Reaching the finale, however, didn’t exactly mean a breather for the duo— and Kaiser especially wasn’t in for an easy journey. First, she sliced her finger open when it caught on a karabiner during a bola-throwing competition. “My finger slid under the clip and as I threw it, it dug into my finger and ripped the top of my finger off. The nerve was coming out and hanging — a little, white nerve. I thought I broke it because it hit my bone,” Kaiser tells Variety. Pushing through despite the wound, Kaiser was finally urged to pause by medics when a ball whipped her in the face during a slingshot challenge.

“I was screaming,” she added of the sting of tending to her wound with antiseptic. “I’ve never felt pain like that. It hurt worse than my face. So, we were rushing because of my sitting down and getting my finger cleaned.”

Per Kaiser, her existing injury and the rush to keep moving led to the slingshot accident, which she said gave her whiplash and shook her to her core. The A.V. Club has reached out to The Challenge for a comment.

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“I thought my teeth were knocked out because the impact was so hard. It felt like my nose was literally off my face, crooked. I remember popping my nose back a bit into place because it felt it off so I kind of crunched it back,” Kaiser recalls. “I licked my teeth to make sure they were all there and had an instant migraine.”

After spending two nights in the hospital, Kaiser returned home with enough strength to complete a confessional (with two black eyes and a broken nose). Kaiser says that despite recovering well, the entire experience put some life stuff in perspective for her.

“I was contemplating my entire life. I was like, ‘Did I just get permanently damaged for the rest of my life because of a TV show?’” she recalls. “I was so mortified.”

Kaiser isn’t the first contestant to feel unduly pushed by The Challenge. A previous iteration of the series, The Challenge: USA, came under scrutiny in September 2022 after more than half its competitors quit during the finale in protest of rule inconsistencies, like unfairly-offered time outs and the ability for some contestants to strategically “opt-out” of certain challenges. Contestant Tyson Apostol also alleged that contestants were misled about the actual amount of prize money they stood to win—he had understood the jackpot to be $500,000 to each winner, not $500,000 to split.

These days, The Challenge contestants are competing for a much bigger pot: $1 million. Kaiser says that her accident scared her because “it shows that as much as they put into safety precautions, you never know. Freak accidents happen.” But she also said fear has “never” held her back, and she would return to The Challenge given the opportunity.

“If I do get the chance, I definitely will go back. I want to go back to redeem myself and everyone who has supported me.”