There’s the myth Sierra carried him in World Tour, but if anything he got top 3 in spite of her constant meddling. The only times her presence actually helped were the last part of the Japan challenge, saving him from drowning in the Yukon and the race to Hawaii. If anything, she hindered him more than she helped. She emotionally manipulated him into having to make her feel better in France when he could’ve helped the team, got him caught in London by trying to kiss him without consent and splitting them from the others, lost the Niagara Falls challenge by fighting with Blaineley, DRUGGED him in China and causing him to be out of commission entirely for the Serengeti challenge, and kept kissing him (again without consent) for the first portion of the Japan challenge. She also messed with his head through her various nonconsensual advances and even an attempted forced marriage, causing his head to be out of the game.

In fact, in both of Cody’s runs on the show, he’s proven himself as a pretty good competitor. He’s shown an innate ability of quick intuition, which can particularly be seen in the dodgeball episode of TDI and with the idea to find the mines through throwing candy, has never been awful at challenges on the whole, and has a good enough social game to have not made any enemies throughout his run and even befriending every villain of gen 1 (with the exception of Courtney, but that’s out of a lack of interaction).

In all honesty, neither of his eliminations were really his fault. The only reason he was eliminated instead of Heather in Paintball Deer Hunter was due to being brutally mauled by a bear. Had that not happened, he may have got as far as merge, if not further. As for World Tour, his not reaching the final can be blamed on two factors: Sierra and bad luck. Sierra, because her blowing up the plane prevented Alejandro being eliminated in 4th, which would have guaranteed a finale spot for Cody as had Heather still reached the final two first then Sierra would’ve thrown for him; and bad luck because having a tiebreaker be a physical contest between him and Alejandro heavily favours his opponent. A contest of intelligence would have evened the odds, as both are known to be quite smart, but the luck of the draw screwed Cody over.

Tldr; Cody is a very capable competitor and attributing his successful playing of the game to “carried by Sierra” is both blatantly untrue and incredibly reductive.