Gladiators season 5

1996

Season Five

Broadcasted in September 1996, During training for this series, both Gladiator Zodiac and contender Nikki Claxton suffered bad injuries on the Pole-Axe event, leading to it being axed for this series. Pyramid had also been axed due to career ending injuries to Jet and Amazon. Tilt was also axed due to the injury to Nightshade the year before and Joust was also axed, although the reason for this was never fully explained.

Zodiac's injury meant that she had to sit out the majority of this series. In fact, the only event she competed in was Danger Zone, in its two appearances. Nightshade also made few appearances this season due to illness and injury including suffering a strained neck on Skytrak (she had suffered a neck injury the previous year on Tilt). Both Zodiac and Nightshade left after this series. Panther also made a reduced number of appearances in this series. Because of this, a last minute addition to the team was made, Laser, although because of the nature of her arrival, she never appeared in any of the souvenir programmes.

One new event, Sumo Ball, which was road tested in the Wembley Live shows, appeared.

The Eliminator also had a slight adaptation in which a maze of elastic wires dubbed Spaghetti Junction, was added. This proved unpopular with viewers and was dropped after this series.

There was a slight format change to this series, in which the contenders were split into two teams, North and South, depending on where they came from, hence The Title of this season was Gladiators: The Challenge. The Northern team was coached by Eunice Huthart and the southern team by 1993 male champion Phil Norman. The series saw the format of four Northern heats, Two Northern Semi finals, a Northern final, four Southern heats, two Southern semi finals, a Southern final and a Grand Final.

Venue: National Indoor Arena, Birmingham, England
Presenters: John Fashanu and Ulrika Jonsson
Event Commentator: John Sachs
Referee: John Anderson
Time Keeper: Andrew Norgate

†Overall Series Winner

New Gladiators

• Laser

Gladiators not appearing in future shows

• Nightshade
• Panther
• Trojan
• Zodiac

New event

• Sumo Ball