Soccer Player Takes the Million

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/11/2002 at 01:25 PM EST

It's all over, except for the pouting. Ethan Zohn, 27, a professional soccer player -- and bachelor with a beguiling smile -- from Lexington, Mass., bested his 15 fellow contestants and emerged as the $1 million winner on CBS's "Survivor: Africa," in a two-hour segment broadcast Thursday night. Zohn's runner-up was Kim Johnson, 57, a retired schoolteacher from Oyster Bay, N.Y. Votes were cast by seven of the most recent players to be kicked off the program. The show, set in Kenya's Shaba National Reserve, was filmed last summer over a 39-day period. It was CBS's third such "Survivor" test. "You don't have to be evil, backstabbing and a villain to do well in the game," Zohn, possibly referring to the first "Survivor" winner (Richard Hatch), said shortly after his triumph. "You can be yourself, you can play yourself, you can play fair, you can try as hard as you can and just hope for the best." The two other players still standing when the show began on Thursday: Lex van den Berghe, 38, a marketing manager from Santa Cruz, Calif., who had been heavily favored, and good ol' boy Tom Buchanan, 46, a farmer from Virginia. Despite the lower (but still impressive) ratings of this "Survivor" compared with its two predecessors, a fourth edition, "Survivor: Marquesas," which was shot in the South Pacific, is due to kick off Feb. 28.