Tina Wesson

Template:Survivor contestant Tina Wesson (born December 26, 1960 in Knoxville, Tennessee) won $1,000,000 as the winner of Survivor: The Australian Outback. A married personal nurse from Knoxville, Tennessee, Tina outlasted 15 other players to become the first woman to win the $1 million prize in 2001. She had no votes against her the entire season. She also returned in 2004 for Survivor: All-Stars but this time, she did get votes against her, and was the first person voted off the show, making her last 39 days less than in her previous season, which is the biggest ever decrease of days of a second season from a first season.

Survivor: The Australian Outback

Wesson had many attributes that made her popular with viewers. She was an attractive blonde with a positive, outgoing personality, a friendly Southern accent and a competitive attitude. She was very nurturing to the other castaways, taking on a very maternal role with younger ally Colby.

As part of the Ogakor tribe, Tina was not targeted in the beginning of the game, seeming to mesh well with all the contestants and was not seen as a physical liability. She joined her whole tribe in voting off Kel Gleason and Maralyn Hershey in Episodes 3 and 4. In Episode 5, Tina was part of a move orchestrated on the way to Tribal Council. Tina managed to convince allies Keith Famie and Colby Donaldson to force a tie between Mitchell Olson (who was aligned with Amber Brkich and Jerri Manthey) and Keith, whereby Mitchell would be voted off due to his previous vote at Episode 4's tribal council. Tina has been credited by many Survivor columnists and analysts to have engineered this move, the first overthrow of a dominant alliance in the game's history with a noted voting confessional, "Let the games begin!"

When the tribes merged (new tribe name was Barramundi) at 5-5 from each tribe, the first tribal council resulted in a 5-5 tie, but because Jeff Varner was known to have at least one vote against his name before, he was voted out, and the Ogakor 5 took over as the dominant alliance in the game. They also voted out another Kucha member Alicia Calaway before the final 8. At the Final 8, when the next target Nick Brown won immunity, the dominant faction of the Ogakor 5, Tina, Colby Donaldson and Keith Famie sided with the remaining Kucha members, Nick, Elisabeth Filarski and Rodger Bingham to vote out tribal annoyance and self-proclaimed bitch, Jerri. At the next tribal council, Nick was voted out.

At the Final 6, The main faction of the now Ogakor 4 joined Rodger and Elisabeth to voted out Jerri's old ally Amber, propelling them into the Final 5, at which Tina, Colby and Keith took control and eliminated Rodger first and then Elisabeth at the next two tribal councils. In the Final 3 immunity challenge, Colby continued a winning streak and chose to eliminate the more hated Keith instead of Tina, a move that later came back to haunt him.

In the end, Tina Wesson became the Sole Survivor in a 4-3 vote, in which she gained the votes of Keith Famie, Elisabeth Filarski, Jerri Manthey, and Alicia Calaway.

Survivor: All-Stars

As part of the Saboga tribe who lost immunity in the first episode, Tina, a previous winner, was immediately targeted. She was chosen to be eliminated over Survivor: Africa winner Ethan Zohn, as he was needed for strength in challenges. Tribemate Jenna Lewis orchestrated this move stating "it's our game now, get the .... off our playing field!" With the very first votes against her, Tina was voted out of Survivor: All-Stars in Episode 1, by a 4-2 vote.

Trivia

• As revealed at the reunion show, Tina was originally chosen as an alternate for the show. She was selected the Monday before the show began to actually attend.

• Survivor: Borneo winner Richard Hatch has referred to Tina as the "steel magnolia of the Australian Outback".

• While she already had a thin figure at the start of the competition, the six weeks of starvation and exercise made her extremely skinny.

• In Survivor: The Australian Outback, Wesson dramatically swam across raging water during an episode when the castaway's camp was flooded in order to successfully rescue the tribe's rice can, its lone meager food source at the time.

• She also appeared on HGTV's Designer's Challenge. She and her husband wanted a room to remind her of her experience in the outback.

• Tina Wesson has published a book about her life experiences outside of the Survivor show, entitled Out Live, Out Laugh, Out Love with AuthorHouse.

• Wesson has stated that had Michael Skupin not been severely burned and forced to quit the game, she would not have won because he did not receive a single vote against him.

• She is one of only two mothers (going into the start of the game) to win "Survivor", the other being Sandra Diaz-Twine.

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