What Race Across the World winner Alfie Watts did next…

With English widely spoken in Malaysia, he considered it one of the easier places from their Race Across the World journey to launch the venture: “Kuala Lumpur is an incredible city,” he says. “Football is not something the government has ever invested in, but it’s huge out there – walking around KL we spotted lots of Ronaldo and Messi shirts. Football really helped us bond with the people we met. It’s a unifying force and it fosters a sense of community and hope.”

Although Watts travels to five or six different countries a year as a referee, they tend to be in Europe and the US, so Asia was a completely new experience for him. Aside from Malaysia, Thailand was Watt’s favourite of all the countries he explored. “I just loved the beaches and the cuisine,” he says.

His friendship with school chum Owen endeared the pair to the viewing nation’s hearts, and although he admits the race was tough at times, always on the move, being shadowed by a camera crew, it was an amazing opportunity, which has led to some bonus travel experiences. “I was a guest at the Caribbean Tourism Organisation ball in June, and off the back of that, I’ve been invited to Tobago in August, to do some social media,” Watts says.

“It has been a mental two months since the show aired,” he adds. “Our overwhelming feeling at the finish was relief that we’d won. It was all we cared about at that point. But we had to keep quiet about the outcome for months, so it’s been great to enjoy the reaction. Everyone who’s recognised us has been so kind.”

Watts well and truly has the travel bug, having visited 50 countries by the age of 21, so where is high on his wish list?

“I want to go to Tuvalu, a tiny group of islands in the South Pacific,” he says. “[According to the UN] it’s the least visited country in the world. Planes land there so infrequently that the airport runway is used as a football pitch, and I’d love to referee a game on the runway – that would be such an incredible adventure.”