Samantha Hayes was still reeling Monday morning after her win last night in the grand final of Dancing With The Stars NZ.
The Newshub presenter earned the glitter ball trophy after the public gave her the most votes, despite the judges naming former cricketer Chris Harris as their pick for winner.
"I still can't quite believe that Aaron and I managed to do this," said Sam on The AM Show.
"But it was a beautiful surprise. I'm so happy to have won it for our charity, NZ Riding for the Disabled."
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She said the charity was still tallying how much money had been raised from the reality TV show, and would let people know later.
With hindsight, the journalist says she didn't quite understand how difficult the experience would be until it was too late to pull out.
"I knew it was going to be a challenge and that's part of the reason I signed up. I do love a good challenge. But I had no idea just how tough it would be," said Sam.
"Aaron and I have not had a day off since before Easter, back in March. We've been training - and I've been doing the news at 6pm - every day for 14 weeks. It's been a pretty hard slog and there have been moments where I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I can't do this'.
"It's relentless, week in, week out. You have to learn new styles of dance, get a new routine together every week, then they threw two dances per week at us towards the end there... I don't know if my body could've coped with another week, so I'm pretty pleased it has wrapped up."
Now that Dancing With The Stars NZ has finished for 2018, a new season of The Block NZ launches this week on Three.
Newshub.
