‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Sam Kavanaugh Reveals Toughest Part of Competing on Show

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Everyone knows Jeopardy! requires intense mental strength, but former champion Sam Kavanaugh has said fans often underestimate the physical toll of the game.

Speaking to The U.S. Sun, the 2021 Tournament of Champions winner revealed that contestants don’t just have to focus on practicing trivia but also prepare themselves for the show’s “exhausting” taping schedule. While Jeopardy! airs nightly, the show actually tapes five episodes in a single day, which can be overwhelming for some contestants.

Kavanaugh, who also competed in this year’s Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, revealed that during the 2021 TOC, producers did seven episodes in one day.

“The thing that generally surprises people the most is just how much of an endurance game it is,” the former champ told the outlet. “You tape five episodes, sometimes up to seven episodes a day. Two TOCs ago, I did seven.”

“It is exhausting,” he continued. “It is the most tiring. I played physical sports as a kid, and I’ve never been as tired as after a day of taping.”

He added, “We pretend it’s all taped on a different day, but because it’s all packed in there, there’s an element that’s really hard to gauge in contestants when you’re watching them. ‘Are they good at this? That endurance element.’”

“There’s a lot of variants in the game,” he stated, noting how a player’s winning streak can end for a multitude of reasons. “A lot of it is who finds the Daily Doubles first, and if they can convert on those, they’ll probably win.”

However, he explained a contestant can win “19 times out of 20” and still lose if they get burnt out too early.

Recent Jeopardy! champs Adriana Harmeyer and Drew Basile have shared sentiments similar to Kavanaugh’s when it comes to the show’s intense taping schedule.

Harmeyer, who won 15 consecutive games in Season 40, found herself filming 13 games over three days. “It was more exhausting than I expected,” she told the show. “By the third day, I could feel it wearing on me. I just did my best to fight through it, stay focused on buzzer speed, and remember things. It was an unusual experience.”

Basile, who defeated Harmeyer and went on to win seven games, told Entertainment Weekly, “Jeopardy! is fatiguing. By the end of the taping day I was exhausted,” noting he was “so tired” he couldn’t remember Helen Keller’s name for the Final Jeopardy! answer.

Jeopardy! is next scheduled to tape episodes on September 16 through September 18.