We won Race Across the World while my friend was going blind

With their arms wrapped around each other protectively and hands clasped tight, life-long friends Cathie Rowe, 50, and Tricia Sail, 49, romped home with the £20,000 prize when the third series of BBC1’s Bafta-winning Race Across the World reached a nail-biting conclusion on Wednesday night. The show, which pits couples in a race against time, is in its third series and the viewing figures have never been so high.

More than 3.1 million people tuned in to see them beat the married doctors Zainib, 32, and Mobeen, 31, and the father and daughter Monique, 25, and Ladi, 52, to the finish line in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada’s most easterly city. They had covered 16,000km overland from Vancouver in 51 days.

In the show each couple