Survivor

THE ULTIMATE SURVIVOR: IT'S TINA
May 3, 2001

A tension-filled night at the final Tribal Council marked the shift in power from the tribe members still in play to the Jury, the seven people previously voted out who would determine the ultimate Survivor.

Given one final chance to express why each of them deserved to be the winner, Colby Donaldson and Tina Wesson expressed their views: Said Colby, "In this game you have to be a jack of all trades but not necessarily a master of any. I don't feel that I was a master of any, but I do think I played pretty well." Said Tina, "Strategy played a big role in getting me here today. The strategy of Survivor is to Outwit, Outplay and Outlast. I'm not going to sit here and tell you why you should vote for me. I will say that I hope you don't cast your vote based on that you got your feelings hurt. That is the nature of the game."

After intense deliberation, the Jury cast their vote one by one. And then host Jeff Probst returned with the vote urn in hand and a surprise: Tina, Colby, and the Jury would be waiting a while longer to find out who won because the vote would be revealed live in Los Angeles at the end of the finale. The stunned Survivors watched as Jeff boarded a helicopter that flew him off Tribal Council and into the skies.

And then in the end the votes were revealed live, to the Survivors and to all of America: In a 4-3 vote, the ultimate Survivor was Tina!

Many believed that Tina was the mastermind behind the original Ogakor alliance and perhaps the most strategic, playing both sides of the coin by flying just enough below the radar so that she didn't seem too strong, or too weak to the others. Even Jerri acknowledged that Tina's best play was somehow convincing Colby, who had won the final immunity challenge, to keep her in the final two and to vote off Keith, who, many felt, would have likely lost against Colby.

And so in the end the often soft-spoken mother and personal nurse from Knoxville, Tennessee, became the sole Survivor in the Australian Outback and the winner of one million dollars.