Tracked winners Ga be & Riley 'THE SECRET TO OUR SUCCESS'

These reality TV champs from Ota go reckon their mums were their greatest asset

- Sharon Stephenson.

They might be rugged mountain men, but the winners of reality TV show Tracked admit T they're really softies at heart.

Gabe Ross and Riley Meason were crowned the winners of the first-ever series of Tracked, which pits eight teams against a group of elite trackers on a race through some of the harshest environments in the South Island.

But the 20-year-olds, who met at high school, say their $100,000 win was all down to their mothers.

"Our mums are our biggest supporters and the ones who encouraged us to enter the competition," says Gabe, who's doing a business degree at the University of Otago. "Even though they worried more about our safety than we did!"

The best friends were by far the show's youngest competitors, but they didn't let the age gap get in the way of beating their more experienced British, US and Australian counterparts.

"When we met the others, we were a bit intimidated about their qualifications and backgrounds," admits Riley, who works on a farm north of Dunedin. "These people had thrown themselves out of planes and run 140km races, whereas we'd only ever run 10km before."