Hola everyone, sorry for the late post - I have been away on holidays in France, Italy and Monaco to celebrate my birthday and I have only just got home last night, you can see my photos from that trip on my Instagram. Instead of being able to blog about this latest right away, I actually had some work stuff waiting for me to deal with the moment I got home. Once again, I am delighted that I managed to accurately predict the winners and losers for this leg, even though it was evidently a very close battle for first place. TAR US has been to Santiago four times before in S7 E2 and E3, S11 E2, S16 E2 and finally most recently in S23 E2 and E3. This is also the first time this season that TAR has returned to a city that they have visited before, the first four legs have been run in places they had never visited before. There's a lot to get into for this leg, so please allow me to begin, as always, with the average ranking statistics after leg 5 in Santiago.
Average rankings after leg 5 in Santiago
- Ricky & Cesar 1.4
- Rod & Leticia 3.2
- Juan & Shane 3.8
- Derek & Shelisa 4.6
- Amber & Vinny 5.2
- Angie & Danny 5.8
- Yvonne & Melissa 6
- Sunny & Bizzy 8
- Kishori & Karishma 9.2 (eliminated in Santiago)
So where do we stand so far?
I think it is important to look at how the teams have progressed this far in the race by taking stock of their average rankings - the notable movements this week are as follows: Derek & Shelisa have fallen down to 4th place after a difficult leg in Santiago which saw them come in 8th, narrowly escaping elimination. Juan & Shane are slowly climbing up the rankings after their best performance yet this season, coming in 2nd in Santiago. Angie & Danny are slowly climbing as well after another slow and steady performance which saw them come in a very respectable 4th in this leg. Ricky & Cesar are by far the strongest team by a long way but I think two teams which cannot be overlooked are Juan & Shane and Amber & Vinny, both teams had a slow start to the season but have really hit their strides in recent legs, performing well enough to give Ricky & Cesar a real challenge for first place. It would be interesting to see if either of these teams can finally get their act together in one of the coming legs to finally beat Ricky & Cesar. Some teams improve as the season progresses - they gain confidence, learn vital lessons, form useful alliances and become a lot more strategic whilst other teams simply give in to the fatigue and pressure - thus it is interesting to see where the teams stand after 5 legs and it isn't just the averages at this stage that tells the story, but whether those averages have been improving (as in the case of Juan & Shane and Amber & Vinny) or if they have been deteriorating (as in the case of Rod & Leticia and Derek & Shelisa). I like analysing statistics like that because it takes all emotions out of the analysis as we're merely looking at the numbers rather than evaluating whether we like a team or not. I have seen way too many inane comments on social media by people who just want to like or hate particular teams without actually giving any good reasons why.
Are we surprised that Ricky & Cesar won again? Are they unstoppable?
Actually they won by a very narrow margin - Juan & Shane were hot on their heels when racing to the pit stop and had they wasted just a few more minutes looking for the parking, they could have finished 2nd in this leg. I note that they did not run a perfect leg, but as they were in the first group, they had enough of a buffer to get away with the very small mistakes they made along the way - firstly, they were slow to navigate through Santiago. Despite leaving in the first group and being the first to find Marilyn Monroe's Thunderbird at the car museum, they arrived 4th at the detour to assemble the skateboard - why? I had a look at Google maps, it is a 9.5 km (5.9 miles) drive which should take about 14 minutes or so, depending on traffic. There are two possible routes to take, one slightly longer than the other but if you get lost or take a longer route, then you will fall behind the teams who navigate a lot more efficiently. Cesar did make up one place during that roadblock and they left the skatepark in 3rd place, but they were definitely still behind two teams at that stage. It was only their choice of detour that made them jump ahead to first place - they chose to do the one man band detour instead of doing the more physically demanding rock climbing detour. This was the part that puzzled me somewhat as the team orders really changed at that point. Angie & Danny left the skatepark first but arrived at the detour after Ricky & Cesar, presumably having lost time due to navigation errors. Juan & Shane blitzed through the rock climbing challenge given how super strong they both are, but they still somehow fell behind Ricky & Cesar on the way to the pit stop? Ricky & Cesar had to take the time to learn the routine with the drums and then perform until they could collect 2500 pesos and perhaps it was the edit, but it seem to be the side of the detour that took longer - so how the heck did they still beat Juan & Shane? Both detours are about the same distance away from the skatepark (about 13 to 14 km, 8 to 8.5 miles) so once again, we can only chalk this up to a combination of navigation skills and their luck with the traffic in Santiago. I think Juan & Shane were quite unlucky not to have won this leg, but they have certainly established themselves as one of the strongest teams in this season capable of winning. They started off in the second group, 15 minutes behind Ricky & Cesar - if they had been in the first group, they would have definitely won this leg. But in the next leg, they will be in the first group so they may win the next leg, I wouldn't assume anything about Ricky & Cesar simply winning TAR S36 yet.
Let's talk about Kishori & Karishma's elimination.
Unsurprisingly, the weakest team statistically got eliminated. Putting aside all personal feelings, this was the most likely outcome. They had struggled all 5 legs so far, finishing no higher than 8th (which was back in E3) and quite frankly, I was surprised that they made it to E5 and this only happened because there were even weaker teams in this season that did even worse. I don't want to be cruel about Kishori & Karishma, they have a beautiful back story about their unique relationship as cousins and they seem like nice people - they just sucked at the race as they simply didn't have the skills to perform well on TAR. They don't speak Spanish, they suck at navigation, they can't read maps and keep getting lost, they struggle with tasks which require attention to detail and on top of all that, they struggled to drive stick shift. This then begs the question: surely the production team would have made some effort to tell the teams how to prepare for the race, for example, "learn how to drive stick shift, some of the cars you will be getting on the race will not be automatic." Kishori & Karishma claimed to have learnt how to drive stick shift, yet they wasted precious time trying to figure it out when they got to the car. Were they simply overconfident about their abilities? Were they not that fussed about maximizing their chances of winning a million dollars? Did they already accept that they had so little chance of winning that they were just going to take part to gain more followers on social media and use this as the golden opportunity to launch a career in reality TV? Most fans of TAR would look at them and probably think, they would be lucky to survive a few legs on any season, so why were they even cast in the first place? I will continue this discussion about this issue in my next post.
Was the one man band detour way too easy?
Ah yes, this was one of the main complaints of this episode on social media. Once the teams had learnt the routine, they just ran around collecting money and at no stage was the quality of their performance judged - all they had to do was collect 2500 pesos (US$2.60) to complete this detour. Team members could even switch roles between the person playing the drugs and the one collecting the money at any stage of the performance, that was exactly what Rod & Leticia did and Leticia did not participate in the training at all, she didn't even try to learn what to do for this task but was able to complete it regardless as it really didn't matter how good or bad her performance was. People in the park got curious when they saw a TV crew filming and some gave money. So this is a valid criticism of this episode and a way this could have been made a lot more difficult was if the drummer had to perform a choreographed routine, effectively turning it from a "begging for money" challenge to a dance challenge. When I was in Santiago, I did see a lot of street performers and buskers, from musicians to dancers to magicians, most of them were a lot more interesting than the one man bands featured in this episode. In any case, one man bands aren't unique to Santiago or Chile, I wonder why they chose to feature this for the detour when there are plenty of other aspects of the local culture in Chile which are more interesting.
Are there any weak teams left? Who will be eliminated next?
Going into E6, the weakest team is at this moment Sunny & Bizzy with an average of 8, substantially lower than the next weakest team of Yvonne & Melissa with an average of 6. Whilst Sunny & Bizzy tend to perform well at most challenges, it is their poor navigation skills that keeps dropping them to the back of the pack. We cannot ignore the fact that Derek & Shelissa struggled on this leg, finishing at the very back of the pack, narrowly avoiding elimination. They started in the last group, 30 minutes behind the leaders and it is always an uphill struggle for those in the last group, the odds are stacked against them and you're hoping for one of the other teams in that last group to make a big enough mistake to save you from elimination. Derek & Shelissa were lucky in this leg as there was Kisori & Karishma, but would they be able to survive another leg when there are really no more weak teams left? We have come to the stage where only the stronger teams are left, so this is really when the real race starts and the real contenders emerge - there will be no more room for error, one major mistake and you're going to be eliminated with no weak teams left. I would say it is either Derek & Shelissa or Sunny & Bizzy who will be eliminated next as both teams will depart in the last group in the next leg. Given that it will be a mega-leg coming up next in Cordoba, Argentina that will involve twice the number of roadblocks and detours, I have to predict that Sunny & Bizzy will get lost again and lose so much precious time, leading to their elimination and thus sparing Derek & Shelissa to race yet another leg. We did see in the previews Angie struggling with the heat and stress, but I doubt that will lead to their elimination in Cordoba. Not yet anyway. However, we now have to talk about Rod & Leticia and what happened when they decided to take a little trip to visit beautiful Parque Chamisero.
Why did Rod & Leticia go to Parque Chamisero?
Parque Chamisero is a rather large park to the north of Santiago and the shortest distance to get there from the detour would be about 15.4 km (9.6 miles) but given how big the park is and the random nature of their driving, they could have driven a lot further than that and reached the opposite end of the park. This was because Rod simply had a total meltdown and wanted to drive as quickly as possible despite the fact that they were essentially headed north when they wanted to head west - giving in to blind panic doesn't solve the problem, it makes it substantially worse when you're headed in the wrong direction. Thus for a team that won the first two legs, I was surprised at how irrational he was at that point and even though Leticia was trying to navigate and get them back into the city, Rod just carried on driving further and further into the mountains. Hence this is a classic example of a racer having a meltdown - he wasn't the only one having a meltdown in this leg, Karishma was crying when she really struggled with the detour, but at least she was crying in the skatepark - they were not moving rapidly in the wrong direction away from where they needed to be. Despite this massive mistake, Rod & Leticia are still statistically the second strongest team at this point, mostly thanks to their strong showing in the first two legs but now I don't see them as one of the teams that could make it to the finals after that meltdown by Rod over directions. They got away with it this time because there were still some weaker teams around making even sillier mistakes but if this happened a bit later in the race, such a huge mistake could lead to elimination.
Why didn't more teams ask for directions?
This was a leg where many teams got quite lost and thus one question that I saw a lot on social media was why the teams didn't ask for directions on this leg if they didn't know where they were going. Well, there are a few reasons why: firstly, if you don't speak Spanish, then you're out of luck as it is highly unlikely to find any locals who can speak English. The teams started out in Plaza de Armas which was very central, so at least it wouldn't be hard to find a nice hotel to run into and ask for help from the staff who would probably be able to speak English if they deal with tourists all the time. The main tourist information office in Santiago is located in Plaza de Armas as well, so I am surprised none of the teams actually ran there to get directions to go to the first location as you would be certainly be able to find English speaking staff there who can give you precise directions. Once the teams left central Santiago, the chances of them finding somewhere like a 5-star hotel to ask for directions fell. Furthermore, if they did stop someone for directions, the crew would have to ask that person to sign a release form to consent to being in the programme, some of the members of public may not consent and thus would have their faces blurred out in the edit but the crew would still spend some time explaining to them what the programme is and if the members of public had any questions like, "oh am I going to be on TV? Where can I see this programme, when will it be aired?" Naturally, this is a process that may take a while if the member of public is curious and has no sense of urgency, this could really slow a team down. Besides, the teams all had a map, so they may simply choose to just try to use the map rather than take their chances with asking for directions.
Wait, did Danny go to school in Santiago?
Yes, you heard that right. He used to go to school there and his mother Angie recalls how she would get these phone calls from him describing what he did at school there, so presumably she stayed in the US whilst he spent some time in Chile. This confuses me, if he did spend time in Chile, then why isn't he totally fluent in Spanish? Did he only go on exchange there for one term there, so it wasn't really long enough for him to learn Spanish? Or did he go to an American school there where they had very little interactions with the locals and didn't even learn Spanish? And why didn't his mother go with him? I just roll my eyes when it comes to these expatriate communities abroad - I have an Italian friend who was born in China, grew up in China till the age of 18 and can barely string together a sentence in basic Mandarin and I'm like, dude, seriously, how come you don't speak Mandarin despite having grown up in China? How is that possible? How could you live 18 years in China and avoid picking up Mandarin? Quite simply, he stuck to other white expatriates in the international school (where they mostly spoke English) and simply avoided the locals for 18 years.
Who will win the next leg?
This will be a hard one to call as the three strongest teams will be starting out in the first group. Both Amber & Vinny and Juan & Shane have shown that they can beat Ricky & Cesar. I had a watch of the previews and it is not giving me any real indication of the outcome, so I am simply going to have to go with the statistics and predict that Ricky & Cesar would win again, but I know I can quite easily be wrong on this occasion. Okay I did say that this would be a much shorter post as I am rushing this out and so please do feel free to let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading, as always.
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