How Elliot won Race Around the World in 'opportunity of a lifetime'

How Elliot won Race Around the World in 'opportunity of a lifetime' Mon 10 Aug 2026 at 7:55am Elliot Constable was wandering through a park in Chisinau, Moldova, when he met Tatiana. A Race Around the World contestant tasked with making short documentaries on tight deadlines, he was looking for a story. He had only 10 days to shoot and edit a film, but he spent two of those just listening to her. Tatiana had fled Ukraine when Russia attacked her home in 2022, but when she met Constable, she was trying to get back into the war-torn country for cancer treatment. Since then, Constable has been crowned the winner of ABC iview's Race Around the World, a reboot of the 1990s classic TV competition. Now back home in Sydney, Constable tells me Tatiana's back in Kyiv, and their families remain in touch. Loading...The filmmaker credits his success on the show to his character-driven approach. "It's those people that have stories where you think, 'Where are they going to end up?' that, I think, really hit home," Constable says. When I catch him on the phone the day after filming the finale (and the subsequent celebrations), he hasn't even had the chance to return to his apartment yet. Constable's journey took him across South Africa, Norway, Azerbaijan, the Bahamas and eventually Brazil. He's battling the whirr of jet lag as he admits his success is yet to sink in. Winning means Constable receives funding to produce his own project produced by the ABC. "I thought I'd won already because I was on the show, and I think that's the consensus with all the other racers. It's an opportunity of a lifetime; we all won, right?" he says. "But the fact that I now have an opportunity to tell another story or maybe go back and do something a bit bigger… maybe it is going back to Moldova, maybe it's going back to Brazil, I don't know, maybe it's doing something in Australia." It was Brazil, the destination he was allowed to select for the show's finale, where he entered the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and met a father determined to shield his son from a future of crime. "I didn't want to do a story about the gangs, but I wanted the film to be more about hope and this boy who is going to have a challenging decision to make one day," he says. "Do you take an honest path? Often in places like Brazil in the favelas, it's going to mean a tough life. "Or you take this path that is more of the gang route. You see them walking around with gold chains and weapons; they look like action stars, and they're feared and respected, and young boys see that and think, 'I want that life.'" Loading...Constable's main hope is that people watch his films and care for the people and their complex situations. This sentiment is shared by the competition's People's Choice Award winner, Jayden O'Neill, who took out the top spot in the ABC's audience poll. "The reason you make content is because you want the audience to take it in," O'Neill says. On the show, the six contestants were judged each week by a panel of industry experts. "The judging panel is only made up of three people, and they'll all have their own views," he says. "If you can get the popular vote, I think it's really cool that it resonates with so many people, and that's what we're here for." Jayden's favourite films to make were the same ones the audience loved, including his week one entry from the Philippines, which detailed fishers using illegal methods to feed their families. "The connection I made with the people there is what made the film what it was, and you don't have that connection with every single film," O'Neill says. 'A completely solo venture' If you're wondering whether the six contestants were really showing up to a new country every 10 days and making a film on their own, host Zan Rowe confirms as much. "They have to find the story, shoot it, edit it, record the sound and deliver it. It's all a completely solo venture," she says. The show is a reboot of the original series broadcast in 1997 and 1998, but with all of the technological advancements, Rowe says it's barely recognisable. "It is basically launching a new show, and the beauty of that is you can try new things," she says. "In week three we noticed [the contestants] were doing these character pieces that were a bit slow and reflective; we needed to get them more in the field to see them immerse themselves in the country. So we threw them a challenge in that regard and really shook it up." Destinations were also changed at the last minute. "Things were changed, both for safety reasons, geopolitical reasons, but also just to see variety, how the filmmakers were reacting to certain places, what sort of ways the producers could challenge them or take them somewhere where they thought they'd probably do something interesting," Rowe says. In the original series, there was no feedback on the road and no way for the contestants to communicate with each other. Constable says having access to feedback early on helped him refine his approach. "Ultimately, they're looking for a narrative that makes sense. And I think I really took on the feedback. I struggled at the start with having too much going on," he says. "You don't have the luxury of being able to step away from it or have a day off from it, which I think always helps in the real world." For Constable, the clock was always the biggest challenge. "You're constantly up against it with time; you turn up to a country, and you don't know what you're doing. Things fall through, and ideas don't come together, and you sometimes have to pivot," he says. "And then at the end of the episode, they're like, all right, you're going to this place and two hours later you're on a flight." Constable is still very much running on "autopilot", having come back from Brazil only one day before the finale. So, after 100 days across the globe, 10 new films and a shiny prize of an ABC-funded project up his sleeve, he's got one thing on his mind: sleep. Stream Race Around The World free on ABC iview.