How Race Across the World winners Alfie and Owen are spending their £20k
Race Across the World's Alfie and Owen have continued to travel
Race Across the World's 2024 winners Alfie and Owen scooped the £20,000 prize money, so how are they spending their winnings? Yahoo spoke to the winners to find out more about what they have been doing and it all sounds incredibly good fun.
The best friends fought off fierce competition in the final from mother and daughter Eugenie and Isabel but they reached the final checkpoint in Lombok first. After competing the 15,000km race across Eastern Asia over an intense eight-week period of filming, the pair have continued to travel thanks to their boosted budget.
Owen told Yahoo: "We had the travel bug before we did the race. We've been away loads together, and we love it, so we have no reason to stop especially with a bit more money. Now we can enjoy doing something we like!"
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He added: "We were away about a week or two ago in Albania just for a short trip and then we're going away again in a couple of weeks with some other mates as well. So we've got no big things planned but yes a few holidays here and there."
So what have the best friends been up to since winning the race and what are their travel plans for the near future? Plus, Alfie has some heartwarming charity work planned too.
Watch the astonishing moment Alfie and Owen won Race Across the World
Alfie's plans
In the six months since the race before filming the reunion show in London, Alfie has already travelled all over the world. His love and enthusiasm for travel has only continued after competing the race.
In the reunion, Owen joked his best friend had already "blown" half of his winnings on his travels. He told him: "You've probably blown through half of it with all your excursions recently."
So far Alfie has used his winnings to travel to Sweden, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Malta, New Zealand, Australia, Tonga, Fiji and Samoa. This really wowed the rest of the Race Across the World contestants in the reunion show.
He told Yahoo of his travels: "As soon as I landed back and went straight to the reunion from Tonga. Tonga and Samoa were two just unbelievable places. They're stunning. That was probably the two best places that I've been to this year."
The winner has no plans on slowing down on his travels either. In the summer, Alfie has set his sights on the Caribbean too. "That'll just be a two week holiday in the summer," he explained.
Also, Alfie has some big plans to give back too as he is going to do some charitable work in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It's a cause close to his heart after his time there on the race. "I'm going back to Kuala Lumpur later in the year to do some charity work and donate a load of football kits to some of the settlements that we met and poorer communities," he said.
"It's kind of giving back from the race as well, which is nice. I think it's probably the place that we went to that has a really big wealth divide. Malaysia is a beautiful country. It's a really, really well-developed middle income country.
"But it's still got some of Southeast Asia's poorest communities. They are football crazy out there, so I'm a massive football nut, so being able to go out there and deliver that is gonna be incredible. We've been placed over 250 kilogrammes worth, so it's quite nice."
Owen's plans
Inspired by the race, Owen has his own plans to go travelling around Southeast Asia on his first solo holiday. He hopes to be out in Malaysia on the same sort of timescale to Alfie so they can meet up but he's playing it by ear. "I'm seeing what comes my way," he said.
Having learned along the way on the race, Owen has no plans for his time out in Southeast Asia and he's just going to see where it takes him. The winner will however have his phone and won't be travelling on a tight budget thanks to his winnings!
He explained: "I'm planning on going back to like Southeast Asia just on the whole back in September. Do a bit of solo travelling, do all the things that we didn't get to do. See all those places, not on a budget and not on a timescale.
"So I was just planning out to go there and planning to go back out there and enjoy it. I'll be out there for a good four months or something like that. Just see where it takes me. No time pressure though.
"I haven’t even booked the flight yet. Book it next month and then just go from there. Really, I like the idea of winging it so I'm gonna do it again. You don't need to plan everything down to a T. That's how I like it."
Filming the BBC show Race Across the World has changed the way Owen plans to travel in the future.
He said: "You don’t always need to go on Google Maps or Trip Advisor to find out something. A lot of time the local people have the best knowledge. Even if there's a bit of a language barrier, it's definitely worth getting past that to get their recommendations and help because half the time it's so much better than anything you find online."
Catch up on Race Across the World on BBC iPlayer now.
