Surrey's Keenan Wong and two other Team Red members won Canada's Ultimate Challenge on Thursday (April 16).

Starting in March, the 26-year-old personal trainer and part-time kinesiologist was featured in Season 3 of CBC-TV's reality competition series, which transforms Canada "into a giant obstacle course."

As a Challenge winner with teammates Santina Carlson and Mark Manysiak, both of Alberta, Wong scores a VIP trip to Italy to cheer on Team Canada at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano/Cortina.

"It's awesome, surreal," Wong said this week. "It's definitely a blessing to have that experience (on the show) because not a lot of people get to experience something so unique and so cool like I and the other 19 cast-mates got to experience. Just feeling grateful."

Wong, a longtime Fraser Heights resident, said the Challenge proved to be a lot of hard work last fall, when the series taped.

"We did some crazy stuff that I never, ever would have expected myself to be doing," Wong noted. "But it's all worth it now, and I'm just excited to go see Team Canada compete. I've never been to Europe, so I'm very excited for that experience as well."

The seven weeks of competition involved stops at sites across Canada, including Vancouver and Tofino in B.C. and, in Thursday's season-ending episode, the historic Halifax Citadel. Along the way 20 contestants climbed ropes, swam in cold water and did other physical activities.

Wong's Team Red won the final challenge, a Cannonball Gauntlet involving military-style obstacles and cannonball balancing on a board, one located atop a 40-foot tower, in windy conditions.

This was Wong's first appearance on TV, and it sounds like he wants more of the same, even though some moments were really difficult for him.

"There was one competition that will always stick out to me, in Sault Ste. Marie," Wong recalled in a phone call.

"We were slack-lining across a river, pretty high up. I'm not too good with heights and I'm also not a small guy by any means, so that slack-line was definitely a challenge, definitely something that I've never ever tried before.

"I wasn't actually able to make it across the rope, but how that specific challenge worked was, if you fell and hit the water, your team's score reset to zero. So I tried to make it across once, I couldn't, and I just knew I had to put my ego aside and do what was best for the team in that moment, and that was just me sitting on the side, cheering them on and kind of coaching them through.

"I'd say that was probably the toughest challenge for me," Wong added, "just because I'm a competitor and I love to help my team, love to be a part of a winning effort, but just to be able to sit on the side for that one definitely stung a little bit, and it still stings to this day.

"Other than that, the toughest thing was being away from my family. I'm very in touch with my Fijian culture and my family, so being away from them, not having contact with them and not being able to speak with, you know, my parents or my brother and my sister every day, that was definitely a challenge."

notes Wong's "dawg" mentality, how he grew up playing "every sport imaginable" in Surrey (including many years with Whalley Little League) despite his family's financial difficulties, a COVID-era dedication to gym workouts and also his strong desire to win at everything.

Also noted is a life-threatening situation in the South Pacific Ocean last summer, prior to recording episodes of Canada's Ultimate Challenge.

"During a family reunion we were sailing from one island to another on a very small, Third-World-country type of boat, and the waves were extremely rough," Wong explained.

"It got very, very close to the boat actually tipping, capsizing. There were only six life jackets and eight of us in there, so my father and I didn't even have a life jacket. I knew that if we go over, there's probably a good chance that I might not make it. We saw our lives flash before our eyes. There were a lot of tears, a lot of prayers going up, and we were very, very lucky to escape.

"I've been a decent swimmer," Wong added, "but that crazy situation turned me off swimming a bit — not that I'm scared of water, I love to swim and do water sports, but I'm very hesitant now, and I just know that that water is unforgiving."

Wong planned to fly to Alberta to watch with his teammates, now good friends, then return to Surrey to focus on his All In 2 Athletics business.

On social media, find him on , and watch Wong talk about himself in .

"I am pretty active on social media and actually, the producers of Big Brother Canada reached out to me through social media and wanted me to be on that show," Wong said of events leading to his TV adventures.

"They asked me to do interviews, but I told my brother (Matthew, also a kinesiologist) right away and kind of forced him — 'Hey, you're gonna interview for this,' you know," Wong added with a laugh. "Long story short, , around this time last year, so that's how I kind of got my foot in the door with the reality-TV thing, leading to Canada's Ultimate Challenge. It's been fun."