As Survivor 49 was airing, many fans of the beloved reality show found the season to be disappointingly boring. However, the truly remarkable thing is that the season has become anything but boring now that it has been over for weeks. The biggest reason for that is the fact that Sage Ahrens-Nichols has been speaking out about the drama she says happened behind the scenes before the season began.
First, Ahrens-Nichols stepped forward to defend one of her Survivor 49 castmates who some fans thought may have cheated before the season started. Then, she revealed that several players from the season cheated by pregaming, giving themselves an unfair advantage in the game.
Now, Ahrens-Nichols has named two of those alleged cheaters and talked about who she says was responsible for one player being eliminated before the season began.
Survivor 49’s Sage Ahrens-Nichols claims that Sophi Balerdi and Jake Latimer cheated by pregaming
The video begins with Ahrens-Nichols explaining why she chose to wait until now to speak out about the pregaming. More importantly, it should be noted that, in the beginning of the video, Ahrens-Nichols called on anyone keeping track of her statements to not harass any of her Survivor 49 castmates.
Ahrens-Nichols also went on to restate that call for nobody to be harassed several more times throughout the video, to her credit.
The main news from the video was the fact that Ahrens-Nichols claimed that six Survivor 49 players engaged in active pregaming that she feels crossed the line before the season began. Two of those players were removed from the season before it started in a historic move for the show. This article will touch on that more later.
Of the four players involved who still got to play, Ahrens-Nichols chose not to name two of them. One of the four players she won’t name because she didn’t witness their actions firsthand, instead hearing about them from other players. Ahrens-Nichols chose not to name another player because she believed they’d exhibited growth as a person since the incidents and that they likely didn’t think what they did was egregious.
The first player that Ahrens-Nichols called out for pregaming was Jake Latimer. She also claimed that she knew other things that he’d done that were worse, but she was choosing not to expose them, because she believed he didn’t know those actions were negatively affecting people. Ahrens-Nichols also stated that she likes Latimer and doesn’t think that he is a bad person. Instead, she expressed her opinion that there is a difference between his intent and the effects he can sometimes have on others.
While talking about Latimer’s pregaming, Ahrens-Nichols claimed that he strategized extensively with the male Survivor 49 player who was removed from the game. She also claimed that Latimer instigated the majority of the pregaming conversations and stated that she believed he would have been booted too if another alternate was available to replace him.
After making those claims about Latimer, Ahrens-Nichols went on to state that Sophi also broke the rules by pregaming before Survivor 49 began.
In the video, Ahrens-Nichols claimed that she witnessed Balerdi talking to other players several times before the game started. She also claimed that she saw Latimer and Balerdi up at 3 in the morning talking to each other, and that she knows Sophi got up in the night to talk to another player.
Interestingly, Ahrens-Nichols claims that through these conversations that were completely against the rules, Balerdi learned at least one fact that should have been secret. In the video, Ahrens-Nichols claimed to have learned she was on the same starting tribe as Rizo Velovic from Balerdi.
On top of naming Latimer and Balerdi, Ahrens-Nichols also stated that she feels bad for the Survivor 49 players who were eliminated early because she believes that the pregaming resulted in people competing at a disadvantage.
Sage claims it was Kristina Mills whose actions got a Survivor 49 player removed
On Jan. 2, 2025, Ahrens-Nichols published a series of three videos in which she also spoke about what went on before Survivor 49 began. Much of the discussion in that video touched on the same topics recapped above, but without naming Jake or Sophi. However, Ahrens-Nichols revealed some extremely noteworthy information during those videos.
Most notably, Ahrens-Nichols claimed that Kristina Mills got the male Survivor 49 player who was removed from the game booted.
According to Ahrens-Nichols, Mills found out that the male player who got removed was targeting her during the pregame strategizing. Realizing that the pregame cheating ruined her chances in the game, she approached the production team, and he was eliminated from the game as a result. Ahrens-Nichols also claimed that she knows that because Mills revealed what she’d done during the game, which resulted in the people she told agreeing she’d made the right decision.
Ahrens-Nichols also mentioned the female Survivor 49 player who was removed from the game during the three-video series. Ahrens-Nichols expressed her opinion that one of Survivor 49’s female players who got to play was a worse offender for pregaming than the female player who was removed from the game.
