FORSYTH COUNTY, N.C. — A Triad man was the Jeopardy! champion Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. However, he lost Thursday night's round.
Lawrence Long, originally from Yadkin County, is a nursing student at Forsyth Tech Community college. The College gave him a special shout-out on Twitter when he originally won the first night.
Long told us all about his first night on the show.
"I don't really remember the ones I got right. Like they come in there, but the ones that you miss, or that you didn't get, and on a daily, on the first Daily Double last night, I mixed up the rivers in Italy," said Lawrence Long." So I got to the wrong city, and my mom was sitting right next to me. She said the right answer. She's like, well, I could have told you that. So which was you know, great at the time."
Long said it took a look of preparation prior to appearing on the show.
"I took the second test, in June or July. And then following that, I got a call to appear on a zoom interview and mock gameplay call. It involved playing a little bit of the game and doing the interview process. Then I got a call from them in October to be on it. So prior to doing that, I really ramped up my preparation. I started doing about 300 Final Jeopardy's a day," said Long.
According to Long, preparing for Jeopardy is like a professional sport. He said it takes an extensive about of supplemental research.
"Claire McNair who wrote the recent Jeopardy book about it has compared it to a professional sport. And with the trend and all of these long-term champions, it is very much becoming that level of preparation. people are making large sums of monies on each of these games and they're going on extended streaks and that's fantastic," said Long.