Every Season of The Challenge, Ranked: #30— The Gauntlet

Location: Telluride, Colorado

Host: Jonny Moseley

Aired: 2003–04

Champions: Road Rules (Veronica, Rachel, Sarah, Roni, Cara, Dave, Darrell, Theo and Adam)

Overall Thoughts: I consider The Gauntlet to be a quintessential meat and potatoes Challenge season.

Without a ton of drama happening, most of the episodes consisted of the standard daily challenge/deliberation/elimination pattern, without much time given to the in-house dynamics.

Still in the 30-minute episode era, the invention of eliminations on The Gauntlet was probably the most important change in Challenge history. The move paid off right away, as the voting format made team dynamics more important than ever with each team having to vote in one of their own players after every mission.

There was a lot of dissent on both teams — Real World struggling with all their early losses along with the Mike/Trishelle/Coral drama, and of course Road Rules’ controversial decisions to make Sarah the team whipping girl.

With both teams having pretty well-defined narratives — the Real World not being able to get their act together…