Throwing a challenge is kind of like lying: it might look like the thing to do in the short term, but in the long run, it nearly always turns out bad.
I don't think any winner was part of a thrown challenge.
Ozzy made it to the Finals in Cook Islands thanks to a historic IC run, but he didn't win.
Jaime and PG were part of a thrown challenge in China. They were both booted shortly thereafter.
Mrs. Useless, Sandra, would be the only argument that I can think of. She was part of Drake who threw a challenge, which started a turn of fortune that eventually saw Drake go 5-5 into the merge, making it a nearly disastrous decision. However, I'm not sure you can count that because it was Burton's idea to throw the challenge, and I don't think the Rupert-Christy-Sandra alliance was even down with it.
Obviously, Matt idiotically threw an individual IC and all but handed the win to Jenna in Amazon.
Several winners who didn't win the final IC claimed afterwards to not want to win it- Ethan and Parvati for instance, but that is an easy thing to say AFTER you didn't win the IC.
Terry never had a shot at a majority. Frankly, Casaya was mostly a younger tribe whose personalities differed greatly from Terry. They wanted nothing more than a chance to boot him if he ever failed to win an IC. He did what he had to do and was an unfair final IC away from winning the whole thing. Terry's only chance was the alliance he tried to make with Danielle who destroyed her own game by voting out Courtney. Her and Courtney were too afraid of Terry to go to the end with him, but as it turned out, Danielle or Courtney wins the Final IC. Either takes the other to the Finals, and Danielle wins if she would have only had the courage to join with Terry and boot Aras or Cerie, both of which Danielle had no shot of beating in a vote.
Aruba has always said Colby made the biggest blunder ever for not taking Keith to the FTC, but Danielle basically did the same thing.

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