Mattea Roach Has The Fifth Longest Winning Streak In ‘Jeopardy!’ History, But Moving Further Up The Leaderboard Will Be Tough

Mattea Roach has the longest winning streak of any Canadian contestant in Jeopardy! history, but her achievements go further than the land of Rush and Timbits.

Following her win during Monday’s episode of the game show, the 23-year-old tutor from Toronto is tied with Julia Collins for fifth place on the list of consecutive games won with 20. The only contestants ahead of her: Ken Jennings (74), Amy Schneider (40), Matt Amodio (38), and James Holzhauer (32). That 12-game gap will be difficult to close, but if anyone can do it, it’s the Jeopardy! meme queen. Roach is also in sixth place for (non-tournament) earnings with $476,985. Next up: Jason Zuffranieri with $532,496.

Roach recently spoke to GLAAD about her winning streak, which she highlighted in a Twitter thread. “I don’t really talk about being a lesbian in any of my contestant anecdotes on the show, so I appreciated the opportunity to discuss what being a queer person on Jeopardy means to me,” she wrote. Roach has “seen a lot of people over the past few weeks offer different takes about why my sexual orientation does (or doesn’t) matter to my appearance on Jeopardy, and so I wanted to throw my two cents in.”

She continued:

“I think it does matter, but in a limited way. My identity isn’t relevant to how well I performed on the show, but it is relevant in that I am someone who is read as queer in real life because of the way that I dress, talk, move my body, and other intangible factors… By identifying myself in my Twitter bio and elsewhere, I hoped to show LGBTQ+ Jeopardy viewers who saw something of themselves in me that what they were seeing was true, as well as take power away from people who would call me gay pejoratively.”

You can watch the interview here, and read the thread below.

— Mattea Roach (@mattearoach) May 2, 2022