Chris “CT” Tamburello has survived nearly two decades of MTV’s The Challenge, a serious health scare that could have ended his career entirely, and, on Season 2 of The Traitors, the deadlocked final vote that decided whether he’d win the whole game.
Tamburello’s Challenge career began the way so many others do, on a Real World season that had no idea it was launching one of the franchise’s biggest stars.
Nearly Two Decades on The Challenge
Tamburello debuted on The Real World: Paris in 2003 and has competed across roughly 19 seasons of The Challenge since, standing as the franchise’s all-time leading money winner. In 2021, he suffered a brain aneurysm that required emergency surgery, a health crisis he has spoken about candidly since as one of the most serious moments of his life, returning to competition afterward against real medical odds.
Winning The Traitors as a Faithful
Tamburello played Season 2 of The Traitors as a Faithful, leaning on a real friendship and season-long alliance with fellow Challenge veteran Trishelle Cannatella. That partnership carried both of them to the final round after they helped banish the last remaining Traitor, Kate Chastain. In the finale, the two discussed splitting the prize three ways with fellow finalist MJ Javid before a deadlocked revote instead ended with Trishelle switching her vote to MJ, sending CT and Trishelle to victory together, the first time a man, and the first time a Faithful, had ever won the US version of the show.
Life After the Win
Tamburello finalized a divorce from Lilianet Solares, whom he married in 2018, and has continued competing in The Challenge franchise since his Traitors win. He and Trishelle have both publicly denied persistent rumors of a romantic relationship beyond their long friendship, addressing the speculation directly in interviews rather than letting it linger. Between the aneurysm recovery and a historic Traitors win, Tamburello’s last several years have added real stakes to a career that started as just another Real World cast member two decades ago.