Hola and hello everyone, I'm so happy I actually correctly predicted both the team that would win this leg and the team that got eliminated in Guatapé, Colombia this week; although I did get a massive hint from the previews. I thought this episode was particularly interesting because some of the teams that did very well in the first leg struggled in this leg whilst other teams that were at the back of the pack shifted gears and jumped to the front of the pack. I like it when it is unpredictable like that, because you don't want to be able to guess exactly which teams will make it to the final and which team will probably win the season. Sure we all have our favourites by this stage but we don't want the winner to be a forgone conclusion this early in the season. But let's look at the average ranking statistics after leg 3 and I am delighted as my favourite team is currently number one - so sue me, I'm playing favourites here and I always do this every season.
Average rankings after leg 3 in Guatapé
- Ricky & Cesar 1.67
- Rod & Leticia 2.33
- Derek & Shelisa 3
- Juan & Shane 4
- Yvonne & Melissa 5.67
- Amber & Vinny 7
- Angie & Danny 7.33
- Sunny & Bizzy 8.33
- Michelle & Sean 8.67
- Anthony & Bailey 9 (eliminated in Guatapé)
- Kishori & Karishma 9.33
Ricky & Cesar finally get the win they so deserve, they were the first to get to the top of El Peñón de Guatapé - they even beat Rod & Leticia to the top which shows you just how strong they are. After that, with Cesar's Spanish language skills they cruised through the rest of the leg flawlessly to win first place by a very comfortable margin. However, the team that impressed me the most in this leg was Amber & Vinny, they started out in the second group, 15 minutes behind the first group. Hence you have to take into account the fact that they overtook teams like Rod & Leticia and Derek & Shelisa who had a substantial heads start of 15 minutes in this leg. I thought they looked like a rather strong team and they do speak Spanish, yet they had an absolutely dreadful first leg in Puerto Vallarta finishing 12th, narrowly escaping elimination and now they are making their way from the back of the pack to the front. Their strong performance in this leg demonstrates that they do have what it takes to perform really well in this season, but it was navigation that let them down in leg 1 - so would that come back to haunt them again in the future? There wasn't that much navigation in this leg, the teams started right in front of El Peñón de Guatapé. They had to then find the water taxi which didn't look that hard to find, then once they got to Guatapé town, the detour locations were very near. After that, transport was provided for the teams to go to the coffee plantation, so this was nothing like the kind of navigation that the teams had to do in leg 1. It seems that once you take navigation out of the equation, Amber & Vinny can really excel but I'd like to see them do well in a leg with a lot of navigation, then we can dismiss their performance in leg 1 as just plain bad luck. Derek & Shelisa really held their own in a very strong field to stay in 3rd place and I like this team, they are showing that you can be over 50 and still perform well on TAR, you just have to be super fit and strong. I thought Juan & Shane might have done a bit better in this leg given that Juan is from Colombia, but nonetheless their 4th place is still very respectable. Despite having never cooked meat before, I was impressed that Kishori & Karishma managed to get through that cooking detour.
What happened to Rod & Leticia, why did they perform so poorly in this leg?
Perhaps poorly is a strong word, but Rod & Leticia slipped from first to fifth in this leg, falling behind two teams that were from the second group that started 15 minutes later. They wasted time on the detour when they didn't pay attention to detail on their presentation of the bandeja paisa dish. I was surprised that the abuela judges spoke only in Spanish because I knew there was definitely a translator just off camera for teams like Rod & Leticia who clearly didn't speak any Spanish. Leticia was also rather slow during the roadblock. Despite a strong start, they're showing that they can make mistakes like that which can cause them to fall behind. This team had a super strong start in legs 1 and 2, but would they be able to keep up the momentum based on physical prowess, as they certainly lack the language skills for this season.
Let's not be too harsh on Angie & Danny
In my last two posts, I was very harsh on Angie & Danny - at least we saw them try to speak a little Spanish on this leg, more than in the first two legs. Their poor performance on this leg was mostly down to the precious time wasted on the water taxi when their boat encountered motor problems and that was not their fault at all. It was plain bad luck and there was this bizarre, unreasonable rule that once you had picked a water taxi, you couldn't switch; that's just not fair. If the water taxi couldn't even start the motor, then the team should have been allowed to switch water taxis. Furthermore, Angie was slow on the roadblock, but at least it was a roadblock that she could do with ease - it wasn't that physical and it would be wise to save Danny for the far more physically demanding roadblocks. So that was definitely the right decision to have her pick the coffee beans.They made the best of a bad situation but there was no risk of them getting eliminated on this leg as there were two teams who wasted so much time switching detours and so let's talk about them.
Sean & Michelle - good grief, where do I begin?
I have to bitch about Sean now, yes he has a fear of heights but he should have known that this was something he had to expect on TAR. Oh he threw such a childish tantrum just walking down those stairs in the coffee plantation. Now as you may know, I am applying to the British version of TAR (it's not called TAR, but in that reality TV show you race around the world in pairs doing challenges to win a big prize, so it is similar enough). During the many interviews and psychological evaluations, I was constantly asked many times how I would react when I am forced to confront my fears and do a task that took me out of my comfort zone, such as by forcing someone who was afraid of heights to go bungee jumping. My point is simple: not only are you warned about it, you are told very clearly many times: you WILL 100% be forced to confront what you fear the most, are you still willing to participate? They wouldn't have forced Sean to have gone bungee jumping to prove that he has the guts to overcome his worst fears, but he must have given some kind of answer that made them think that he was willing to face his fears instead of just saying, hell no I'm not doing that. If he wasn't prepared to confront his fears, he shouldn't be on TAR. So let me tell you what my reply was when I went through that part of the audition process: I came from a poor working class family and the all boys secondary school I attended had a really nasty, toxic culture of bullying. The weaker boys who showed any sign of weakness would be beaten up by the bullies, but if you showed that you were tough, the bullies would leave you alone. I then served 2 years 4 months of military service in the army where the bullying culture was a thousand times worse: again, the bullies picked on the weaker guys who were dumb enough to show signs of fear. I witnessed this guy who got beaten up all the time because he cried and it happened so many times that he eventually killed himself - he threw himself off a balcony one night. I saw his dead body, I ran out to take a look when I heard that awful sound. There are consequences like death when you show signs of weakness like that, so I have learnt the hard way to deal with my fears by keeping a poker face no matter what I am confronted with and deal with the problem calmly. Tears and tantrums do not solve your problems and where I come from, crying and throwing tantrums will only get you badly beaten up on a regular basis, thus that was never an option for me, but I can see why some people give in to that kind of behaviour - allow me to use an example to illustrate my point.
I was in Panama City in 2022 when somebody tried to kill me, I was walking down the street taking photos like a tourist in an outdoor market when this madman came at me with a massive machete. If I had stood still for a moment, he probably would have stabbed me with it. He was out for blood, he wasn't just using it to scare me and rob me, I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to kill me. So what I did was I calmly put my phone back into my pocket, dashed across the road and I kept running for what seemed like an eternity - the whole episode felt like a computer game when I had to react to what was happening around me. As I ran across a busy road to avoid the madman trying to kill me, I was dodging fast moving cars and had to jump across a drain when I got to the other side. I only stopped running when I found some policemen and that was the first time I allowed myself to turn around to see if that man with the machete was still chasing me - he wasn't. When I got home to London, I told that story to some friends at the gym and my friend Samantha said she would have just cried and panicked, she would have given the man her wallet and phone one the spot instead of trying to run away. I need to point out that Samantha is rich, like her parents are so filthy rich: she grew up in a massive house with many servants, she had nannies take care of her when she was a child. So whenever little Samantha was upset, she would start crying and one of the nannies or servants would run up to her and say, "it's okay darling, please don't be upset, whatever the problem is, we'll fix it. Let's get you an ice cream, I'm sure that would make you feel better." The fact is I'm not a rich white heiress like Samantha with a trust fund and a doting nanny. Nobody is going to come running to me the moment I cry - where I come from, people like me get beaten up badly if I dared to even shed a tear. I am human, I have emotions, I remember finding my way to the safety of a museum after the attack in Panama, I just sat there for a moment, trying to process what had just happened and how lucky I was to have managed to escape from that situation. I didn't allow myself to show any emotions even then, hence for me to see someone like Sean throw a tantrum over his fear of heights at the coffee plantation, I have absolutely no patience or sympathy for people who behave like Sean or Samantha when confronted with a challenge like that as Sean was throwing a tantrum and letting his wife down.
This wasn't the first time a racer got paralyzed by fear on TAR.
Let's go way back to TAR S15 E6 in Dubai when Mika refused to go down a water slide because of her fear of heights, leading to their elimination in that leg. Yup, that's another rich white princess who was used to getting her way by crying, throwing a tantrum and then her parents would reward that kind of bad behaviour by giving into her emotional blackmail. If you teach a child that they can get their way simply by crying and throwing a tantrum, then that child will grow up and continue behaving like that even as an adult. In my poor working class family, if I tried to get my way by crying and throwing a tantrum, my very Asian parents would respond to that by (yup you guessed it) beating the crap out of me to teach me an important that you should never ever behave like that. So yeah, I learnt from a very young age not to behave like that. In fact, in my most recent trip to Dubai in November 2022, I visited that water theme park and that supposedly scary slide that Mika refused to go down was the very first water slide I did in that park simply because I wanted to prove a point that I am the kind of person who would face my fears. Was I scared? Of course I was, that water slide was designed to be very scary but I had a point to make. People go to such theme parks for a dose of fear and terror but they know that there is no real danger of serious injury or death. I was disappointed by the experience as I had to queue for about 45 minutes to do that water slide and the whole thing was over and done with in like 3 or 4 seconds flat. I don't think I even had time to scream when I was flying down that water slide, my brain was still processing what was going on when I had already arrived at the bottom of it. It was so fast, way too fast. I remember thinking, "oh was that it?" I would have preferred something like a roller coaster ride where the terror goes on and on for minutes rather than just a few seconds. I am also sensible enough to process information - TAR would never make a racer do anything that would result in serious injury or death. A health and safety officer would have already inspected that water slide and that path in that coffee plantation before declaring it safe enough to use on the race. Either you choose to be sensible and trust that the producers are not trying to murder you on the race, or don't take part - give the chance to another team.
Once again, were the detours uneven? Was the Yipao task too difficult?
Last week, I did say that one side of the detour in leg 2 was considerably more difficult than the other but in leg 3, I think it remains a question that can't be answered. Only two teams showed up at that side of the detour and both switched very quickly once they realized it wasn't easy - they didn't even give it a real attempt before giving up. Fair enough, if you are going to switch detours, that's the way to do it, you need to make a decision very quickly before you waste too much time. Sean & Michelle switched detours and stuck with the cooking task whilst Anthony & Bailey just gave up again once they looked at the recipe and didn't recognize some of the ingredients. By the time they ran back to the Yipao detour, they knew they were in last place and were not in any state of mind to focus on a task that was probably doable as long as you paid attention to detail as to how the various items were loaded onto the jeep. So given that they are physically strong, so they should have stuck with that detour but for some reason, they gave into blind panic and gave up again - that proved to be the decision that sealed their fate. Since nobody tried to complete that side of the detour, I don't think we can say that it was too difficult - it's just that most of the teams were already so tired after climbing El Peñón de Guatapé that they preferred to do the other detour option which was less physically demanding. The producers could have limited the number of cooking stations available forcing those teams at the back of the pack to do the Yiapo detour.
Was I surprised to see Anthony & Bailey eliminated?
Actually no, simply because the trailers had made it pretty obvious that they switched detours more than once - in fact they switched three times, before finally settling on cooking. Teams don't often recover from this kind of mistake and that was a major spoiler. Ironically, they were not the weakest team at this stage, despite their elimination in Guatapé - Kishori & Karishma remain the weakest team at this point with an average ranking of 9.33. Thus the weaker teams like Sean & Michelle, Angie & Danny as well as Kishori & Karishma got lucky on this leg because they made plenty of mistakes and had their share of bad luck, but it was Anthony & Bailey who truly self-destructed because of their very indecisive nature.
Was it fair to make Kishori & Karishma cook meat for the detour?
Kishori is a vegan whilst Karishma is vegetarian who eats eggs, Thus they had never ever cooked meat before whilst a lot of the other racers have had a lifetime of experience cooking meat. I think it is fair because they had the option of looking at the detour and deciding on the spot, that's meat and we're not touching meat, so we are going to switch detours now. Furthermore, racers often encounter tasks that they have never done before on the race, some racers may be lucky to encounter something that they have already done before - for example, Juan has actually prepared bandeja paisa before many times, given that he is Colombian and this was the food from his childhood. The other racers would then be able to say, hey hang on a minute you're giving Juan an unfair advantage in this task. But that is just the luck of the draw - TAR is inherently unfair this way and at least Kishori & Karishma didn't actually have to eat that meat. I think forcing vegan racers to eat meat on the race would certainly offend a lot of viewers and that would have been so wrong.
But what about the roadblock at the coffee plantation?
I know TAR needs its sponsors and they were featuring an experience available on the Expedia app for Colombia showing tourists how coffee is produced in Colombia. However, I felt that the roadblock was way too straightforward - all the racers had to do was harvest one kilogram of beans to get the next clue, whilst it was hard labour, there was very little that could go wrong. If the racers do not pick enough beans the first time round, they simply go back and pick some more and there really wasn't that much that could go wrong in this task. The younger and fitter racers had an advantage over the older ones in that they could work faster in this task but otherwise, nothing could have gone that drastically wrong to alter the order of the teams on that task. Angie was a little slower than the other racers but I never thought that she would be so slow they risked elimination as a result. In fact, the producers were probably delighted that Sean had that meltdown and threw a tantrum, otherwise this would have been a boring and forgettable task. In order to make the roadblock more exciting, the producers either had to include an element of skill in the task, such as by making the racers do a coffee taste test - I'd make the racers taste a cup of coffee in one building, then they would have to walk to another building and taste ten different cups of coffee and identify the one cup that matches the one they have just tasted. If they got it wrong, they would have to return to the first building before being allowed another attempt. In fact this was a detour that was recently done on Amazing Race Finland S1 E12 in Singapore but it was done with tea instead of coffee. Alternatively, you could also throw in an element of luck and chance into the roadblock to try to mix things up; you can do that by making the teams search amongst the coffee plants for a hidden clue, before being allowed to go to the pit stop.
Loads of love for Sunny for soldering on
At the beginning of the leg, it was revealed that Sunny received sad news that her grandmother had passed away - some racers would have dropped out of the race under such circumstances and asked to be put on the first flight home. In fact, that was what happened in S33 - that was the season that was interrupted by the Covid lockdowns. Taylor & Isaiah were meant to join the race again when it restarted but sadly, Taylor's brother passed away just when they were meant to start filming in Switzerland for leg 4 so they pulled out of the race for Taylor to go home to be with his family. This was a totally understandable decision of course and our hearts go out to Taylor. Nonetheless, I am so proud of the way Sunny soldiered on in his leg and embraced everything Colombia had to offer. I'm sure it would have been everything her grandmother wanted her to do and that was why it was so good to see them move up the rankings to 7th place this week. We still see Sunny & Bizzy in the trailers for new week's episode so it's good to know that she will stay in the race.
The next leg will be run in Medellin, Colombia and like in this leg, the teams will be released in three groups according to their position in this leg. Unlike Guatapé, Medellin is a big city with 2.5 million people whilst Guatapé is a small town with just 6,500 people. I believe this next leg will be a two-horse race between Ricky & Cesar and Juan & Shane. Both teams are so strong with a native speaker of Spanish but Shane has a bit of an advantage over Cesar given that he is actually Colombian whilst Cesar is Mexican. A lot of it depends on how many teams will be in the first group, given that there are ten teams going into the next leg - thus it will be a 3-3-4 split. Will the first team consist of three or four teams? Juan & Shane finished leg 3 in 4th and thus if there are three teams in the first group, that will give Ricky & Shane a considerable advantage over Juan & Shane. Since there were only three teams in the first group of this leg, then I am going to say that it will be close but it will be Ricky & Cesar in first place with Juan & Shane in second. The other team I thought stood a chance was Amber & Vinny given that they just ran a fantastic leg in Guatapé and they do speak some Spanish - however, the trailers do show them having a big argument, so I don't think they're going to win this next leg. They're such a strong team that I don't think they are in danger of being eliminated though even with a few problems. We see Sunny & Bizzy struggling with a task and we also see Michelle having a breakdown on what looks like a roadblock (as she was doing it alone, Sean was simply offering encouragement).So given the less than subtle hints, I think it will be one of these teams that will be eliminated next and whilst their averages are around the same at this stage: Amber & Vinny are on 7, Sunny & Bizzy are on 8.33 and Michelle & Sean are on 8.67, based on their poor performance in leg 2 and 3, I predict that it will be Michelle & Sean who will be eliminated in leg 4 and that's me putting aside all my personal feelings and basing it entirely on the average ranking statistics - the numbers never lie. Kishori & Karishma are still statistically the weakest team, but given that they are totally absent from the trailers for next week, I think they will survive yet another leg. Perhaps I have been too harsh on them, but they are the weakest team at the moment for good reason.
Okay guys, so that's it from me on this episode, please leave a comment below and as always, many thanks for reading.
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