EXCLUSIVE: Steph Tisdell opens up about her painful injury while filming the Channel 10 series.

The Amazing Race Australia’s Steph Tisdell and her brother Ben.

The Amazing Race Australia’s Steph Tisdell injured herself while filming the series. Photos: Channel 10

The Amazing Race Australia has seen its fair share of injuries in recent years, with Grant Denyer suffering a medical emergency in India in 2023 and Ian Thorpe struggling with shin splints in Namibia the following year. This year’s season of the reality show was just as gruelling, although one contestant’s brutal injury wasn’t shown on TV.

Comedian Steph Tisdell, who competed alongside her brother Ben, revealed on social media last week that she injured herself on the first day of filming but didn’t realise the extent of her injury until after the race. She tells Yahoo Lifestyle following her elimination in Sunday night’s episode that she left the experience with two torn menisci, a Baker’s cyst, and arthritis in her knees.

“I’d been training for a running documentary that I’m doing, aiming for a marathon, and I’d been training for at least six months before then,” she details. “I’d been on an ‘absolutely no running’ break for like, two months, then I got the approval to go ahead [and film the show]. The only thing that I was told was, ‘Hey, the two worst things that you could do for this is uneven ground and stairs’, and so we rocked up in Nepal and I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’.

“Day one at the top of the stairs, before we even started, I was like, ‘And there goes that knee’.”

Steph shares that the only reason she was able to continue the race was because her brother, who is a doctor, took care of her throughout filming.

“He was like, ‘I’ll make sure that I’ve got painkillers on me, I’ll strap up your knee’. He had a timer set for every time that he needed to top up my pain medication and put Voltaren on,” she details. “The edit couldn’t even touch just how kind he was to me and how much that really helped our relationship. It was really lovely.”

The Amazing Race Australia’s Steph Tisdell and her brother Ben.

Steph says the reality show brought her and her brother Ben closer together. Photo: Channel 10

‘So scared’

While The Amazing Race brought Steph and Ben much closer together and introduced her to several co-stars that quickly became close friends, she reveals that she was having panic attacks every day before filming kicked off because she was “so scared”.

“I just had this fear that everyone at home would be laughing at this big woman struggling and having to rely on Ben so much because he is disturbingly fit, like he’s a marathon runner and he’s a doctor and he’s very healthy,” she remarks.

“I was just really nervous about letting him down, and I have a nervousness about travelling internationally. I’m quite scared of international flights, so it was literally all of my fears culminating.”

The moment she almost quit

The Bump actress says she even began doubting her decision to appear on the show when they were sitting at the airport on the way to their first location, but Ben managed to calm her down.

“He was like, ‘No, I think you’re fine, Steph, I think we’re just gonna have fun. How often does anybody get the opportunity to go travelling with their sibling? We literally get to go travelling, and we’re doing it to bring awareness to mum’s charity’. And I was like, ‘You’re right, I need to just get over myself’,” she shares.

“There was a moment where I was like, I actually just need to appreciate and have fun, because I’m learning what a good man my brother is, I’m learning what good people I’m surrounded by in my industry, and I’m learning how much support and love I’ve got at home from family and my partner.”