World
How Race Across The World winners will spend cash prize
Danny Fullbrook,BBC News, Hertfordshire
This article does reveal the winner of Race Across the World
The winners of Race Across the World have revealed how they will spend their share of the £20,000 prize fund.
St Albans school mates, Alfie Watts, 20, and Owen Wood, 21, were the first to reach the final checkpoint in Lombok, Indonesia, and became the youngest winners of the Bafta-winning BBC One Show.
They told BBC London News they hoped to spend their winnings on more travelling.
Mr Watts, who is a referee for the Hertfordshire Football Association, said his next destination would be a visit to Kuala Lumpur to “deliver a load of football kits to underprivileged communities”.
He added: “This is why the race was so brilliant for us. We’re both on the brink of adulthood, so, to be able to see out the twilight years of our youth with an additional ten grand in the pocket is really great.”
Meanwhile trainee pilot Mr Wood planned to return to South East Asia in September.
“Back to Thailand, Vietnam, to do it all again and the bits we missed,” he said.
The show followed them as they raced other pairs across three continents from a starting point in Hokkaido, Japan.
Viewers watched as the lifelong friends went on safari, worked in a club and supported each other when emotions ran high.
The Hertfordshire duo beat mother and daughter Eugenie and Isabel to the finish line by eight minutes.
They were the only two competitors to not be linked by blood or marriage and believed their strong friendship gave them the edge.
“I think that’s what gave us a bit of an advantage, we know what each others limits are and we were just there to have a good time,” said Mr Watts.
“We had very different priorities in the race, Owen wanted to experience a lot more and go home with experiences and I wanted to get to the top of the tree.
“As time went on, we had a tolerance for what each other wanted and, because we care about each other, it made me want to experience [things] because Owen wanted to.”
Mr Wood added: “We went in it as best friends and came out of it as best friends.”