SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from the Wednesday, February 1 episode of MTV’s “The Challenge: Ride or Dies.”
Throughout the 38 seasons of “The Challenge,” there have been several injuries along the way. That said, nothing compares to what Olivia Kaiser went through during part one of the “Ride or Dies” finale. Kaiser and partner Horacio Gutiérrez Jr.
First, in a ball throwing competition, the karabiner that attached the rope to the balls was caught on Kaiser’s finger and split open.
“My finger slipped under the clip and as I threw it, it dug into my finger and tore the top of my finger off. The nerve was coming out and hanging – a small, white thing. I thought I broke it because it hit my bone,” she said Different before the premiere of the program.
But, as the doctors bandaged her finger, she continued to help her partner drink the “slop”, which she described as “warm pitch with clam chowder and fish guts” which “smelled like rotten tuna or at the bottom of a dumpster. ”
“The Challenge: Ride or Dies”
John Rory
Kaiser refused to give up and continued on to the next checkpoints. First, they had to carry several tires, which caused her finger to become dirty and the wound to open again.
Then, she and Gutiérrez got to the slingshot challenge, when they had to hit a target twice. However, she had difficulty pulling the sling back far enough due to her injuries. At one point, his hand slipped and the ball ricocheted, hitting him directly in the face.
“Therefore, [the medics] he made me sit down again after the tires because it was dirty,” she said. “They knew it was going to be rough for me to go on, but they cleaned it out with this antiseptic, which it honestly hurt so bad. I was screaming. I’ve never felt pain like that. It made my face hurt worse. So we rushed him because of me sitting down and wiping my finger.”
Because she didn’t want to let her partner down, Kaiser said she was in a hurry through the checkpoint – and that’s what caused the accident.
“I remember seeing it out of the corner of my eye, the slingshot was a bit twisted on one side, I think. I just went to pull a golf ball back and obviously, as you can see – they caught it all on freaking camera! – but he literally came back and shook me to my core. I got whiplash, it was crazy,” she recalled. “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 pushing my nose back in place a little bit because it felt off so I kind of pinched it back. I clicked my teeth to make sure they were all there and I had a migraine in the immediately.”
Kaiser said she was scared because she was in Argentina, where she doesn’t speak the language or know the area. Besides, she knew how bad the injury could be.
“I was like, if I really have a brain tumor, I could die. This is not a joke. People die all the time from head trauma. I got really, in a crazy, lucky way that he hit me right between the eyes. Of course, I still have a good goal if I get a badger getting a bull’s-eye,” she laughed. “If it had hit me in the eye, I would have lost my eye or died, because the golf ball probably would have gone back behind my eyeball.”
Kaiser was able to stay calm at first, because she didn’t want to show how much pain she was in, hoping she could still carry on – even if there was blood everywhere. “Then I started laughing when they said to me, ‘Olivia, you’re ready. Get in the ambulance,'” she recalled.
The former “Love Island” star spent two nights in the hospital, but she wanted to get home. First, she made a confessional, as shown in the program, with a broken nose and two black eyes – and that was with makeup. She had to go back to the hospital a few days later because her vision was blurry due to the swelling. While everything is now back to normal, she spent a lot of time worrying that that wouldn’t be the case.
“I was thinking about my whole life. I was like, ‘Was I just permanently damaged for the rest of my life because of a TV show?’ I was so mortified. What are the chances that I’ve been injured twice with serious injuries,” she said. “My finger doesn’t look as bad and it wasn’t talked about as much because of my face but it just wasn’t like a small cut. I mean, I’ve never seen my flesh pulled out. It was so disturbing.”
While Gutiérrez wanted to continue on his own and volunteered to do twice the job, the rules were clear: You live and die on your journey or you die. So, he had to go home. Although the ending was difficult for both of them, Kaiser hopes that she will be invited back.
“I was frustrated. As much as I want to be a hard ass, it was really hard, because we worked so hard. I just had this repetition of self-hatred that ruined everything. I felt very bad for a while and I wasn’t sure how my face was going to heal, because the scar on my forehead was very bad. I thought I was never going to see the same thing again. I struggled with not being able to be like myself,” she said. “Every time I looked in the mirror, it was a reminder of what happened to me. I’m not trying to be dramatic about it because it’s not that bad but in the same sense, it’s because it’s not something that anyone could be prepared for.”
Kaiser continued, “I’m definitely scared because it shows how much they put into safety measures, you never know. Terrible accidents happen. But fear never held me back. If I get the chance, I will definitely go back. I want to go back to redeem myself and everyone who supported me.”
“The Challenge: Ride or Dies” airs on MTV Wednesdays at 8 p.m
