‘We knew we would win’: Tricia and Cathie spill all after Race Across the World

Tricia and Cathie have revealed the moment they knew they had won Race Across the World and it’s far earlier than you might think.

Speaking to The Tab, Cathie revealed the clever way they had worked out they were in the lead and she felt they had “clinched it”.

The pair, who have been best friends since meeting at school aged 13, overcame a 14 hour-lead built up by husband and wife pairing  Zainib and Mobeen, to clinch the £20,000 prize in last night’s final.

Tricia and Cathie hadn’t led the race since the third week of the programme when the teams travelled to Banff and they admitted they had their “doubts about winning”.

However, a combination of Zainib and Mobeen being released from the last checkpoint in the evening – meaning they were forced to spend time looking for a place to sleep, and some clever manoeuvres taking taxis first to Halifax and then on to Truro meant Tricia and Cathie arrived at the ferry terminal in North Sydney hours before anyone else.

It was at this point, Cathie thought: “Ooh, 0kay, we’ve actually clinched this.”

“When we got the ferry, there was quite a fuss made about [our] film crew and at that point I thought, ah there’s no other film crew that’s come through here.”

Knowing every team had to leave from the same ferry port to reach Newfoundland, Cathie and Tricia knew they were in the race lead and had overtaken Zainib and Mobeen.

However, the pair said the decision to take the earlier ferry to Port aux Basques rather than to Argentia, which was far closer to the final checkpoint in St John’s, was an easy one to make.

“We just wanted to keep moving,” Tricia said. “What we didn’t want to do is stay stationary for 12 hours because it would have been sat on our minds for 12 hours and we wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

“I would have been pacing like a caged tiger so we just needed to keep moving and it was a cheaper ferry option.”

The best friends picked out their budgeting skills as one of the reasons they won the race.

“One of our strategies was that we wanted to keep money back because we wanted to have choices on the last leg so when we knew how much money we had to start with we built into that weekly budget,” Cathie said.

They also revealed that while they split their funds equally into eight weeks, they decided to hold back a portion at the start of the race to avoid what happened to series one contestants, Josh and Felix.

The first series of Race Across the World saw the final checkpoint placed rather cruelly on a viewing platform at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. The only catch was it cost 46 Singapore dollars (£27) to take the lift up to the viewing platform, 46 dollars which Josh and Felix hadn’t budgeted for and didn’t have.

“We thought we need some money because we don’t know what’s going to happen on the other side,” Tricia said. “I know somebody in series one had to pay to get up the lift so we were like right we’ve got to get the cheapest option and the fastest option so that’s what influenced us really.”

Unlike series one winners Tony and Elaine, who gave a portion of their winnings to charity and series two winners Emon and Jamiul, who ended up donating all of the £20,000 prize money, Tricia and Cathie have revealed they won’t be giving any money to charity.

“Obviously Emon set the bar quite high, didn’t he,” Cathie joked, before explaining the pair’s current fundraising and charity work meant they didn’t feel pressure to follow suit and donate the winnings to charity.

“Trish and I do an awful lot of fundraising anyway, we do a lot of challenges and in fact, we are hoping to do further fundraising later on this year.”

Tricia, who has chromo retinopathy uveitis, said the pair raised £15,000 last year for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and they planned to do the same again this year.

For Tricia, the trip inspired her in more ways than one. “I was working for a bank while I was on the race and I realised whilst it wasn’t a negative environment, everything I did was kind of negative. ‘You can’t do that because of your eyesight’, ‘you can’t do this because of your eyesight’. 

“Strangely, when Cathie and I were walking up Machu Picchu, I decided that actually I needed to do something more positive and give back to people that have helped me so I contacted the RNIB.

“I contacted them and said ‘have you got a job’ and luckily they did – obviously I had to go through the interviews and stuff like that, I now work for them as a community connections coordinator.”

Despite her serious eye condition, Tricia has not wanted to make a big point out of her ailment. She praised the show’s producers, saying they treated it “in a sympathetic way but without making a massive deal about it.”

Reacting to the pair’s win, Vivienne Francis, Chief Social Change Officer at RNIB, praised Tricia for “changing perceptions” and increasing “the understanding of the barriers faced by blind and partially sighted people every day”.

She said: “Congratulations Trish and Cathie on winning Race Across the World. You have displayed resilience and good humour throughout your journey across Canada.

“Trish, your RNIB colleagues have been right behind you as you changed perceptions and increased understanding of the barriers faced by blind and partially sighted people every day, encouraging millions of viewers to see differently about sight loss.”

For those who have been inspired by their journey and want to take part in Race Across the World, Cathie and Tricia both resoundingly said: “Go for it!”

Tricia’s advise to applicants is to make sure throughout the process you simply focus on being yourself. “Enjoy the process and just absolutely be yourselves no matter what and just go with the flow.”

Cathie added: “Definitely go for it, even if you think ‘there’s no way we’ll ever be picked’, that’s exactly what we thought, just go for it.

“We applied in 2019 and because of Covid, we didn’t get any kind of follow up call until the end of 2021 and then everything went really quickly.”

For Tricia, she said the journey was meant to be. “The winning was just absolutely fantastic, it was amazing and it still is amazing.

“We got a call after not seeing each other for 18 months saying we’d like to invite you to an interview, it was absolute madness. It was meant to be because you know it was the first time in 18 months we’d seen each other and we got the call.”

All episodes of Race Across The World are currently available on iPlayer. For all the latest reality TV and entertainment news and gossip, like Pop Culture Shrine on Facebook. 

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Dummy runs and strict rules: The biggest production secrets behind Race Across The World

• Take this quiz and we’ll tell you how long you would last on this year’s Race Across the World

• From Crocs to lucky socks: The luxury items the Race Across The World cast took with them

Featured image via BBC