More than six years after winning a Jeopardy! Teen Tournament in dramatic fashion, contestant Sharath Narayan once again pulled off a clutch game show victory on Thursday’s The Chase on ABC.
The Chase features three contestants going up against a designated chaser whose goal is to take down the challengers by answering more questions more quickly, which happens often. This time around, however, Narayan and one of his teammates made it to the end where they managed to outsmart chaser Brad Rutter on their way to winning $110,000 in prize money.
But more on that in a minute, because it’s worth noting that Narayan, at the time of this taping, was a student on a full-ride scholarship at Vanderbilt University where he was about to graduate with a degree in biology and plans on earning his PhD to become a biology professor.
And clearly the smarts have been there for a while because Narayan also previously won the 2016 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament, hosted by Alex Trebek. And he did it, in part, by studying wagering strategy leading up to the event and then placing a winning wager at the end of two games that would see him prevail over competitor Alec Fischthal by a mere $1 — and earning $100,000 for the victory. You can see how the moment unfolded below.
Of course, there was one person on Thursday who wasn’t overly impressed by Narayan’s resume: chaser Rutter. After Narayan talked about his Jeopardy! win, Rutter mockingly responded by saying, “Teen Tournament? Ooh!”
Rutter has won the most money in Jeopardy! history and has denied more than $1.2 million from contestants on The Chase, so if anyone has room to taunt, it’s him. Plus it’s his job to trash talk the players, which he continued to do with young Narayan, throwing lines like, “I have ties older than you.”
Not that they landed with any effect. Narayan was impressive in both his knowledge and his ability to guess the right answer during multiple choice questions. In the final chase, he and his teammate correctly answered 18 questions — with Narayan nailing most of them.
They ultimately fended off Rutter’s final takedown attempt by using push-backs in which contestants have a chance to correctly answer questions that chasers get wrong. And ironically, given Rutter’s ribbings about Narayan’s youth, his missed push-back questions involved younger-leaning pop culture topics like The Bachelorette, Venmo and the Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak music group, Silk Sonic.
In the end, youth prevailed, and Narayan was humble in victory, much like he was after winning the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament in 2016, and he received high praise from not only Rutter but the show’s other chasers watching on monitors.
Narayan also got plenty of love from viewers on Twitter, including from one user who pointed out that the future biology professor may well have a future in game shows.
The Chase airs Thursdays on ABC.
