Hola guys, the mega leg in Cordoba, Argentina has certainly produced some interesting results. Firstly, let me put my hands up and admit, both my predictions were wrong for this episode. I predicted that Ricky & Cesar would win again (they narrowly came in 2nd) and I thought Sunny & Bizzy would be eliminated (but they came in 7th instead). This is the 7th time TAR US has visited Argentina (it is in fact the most visited country by TAR in South America) but the first time they raced in the city of Cordoba - in the past, they have often preferred to go to the capital city Buenos Aires. There's so much to get through, but as always please allow me to start with the average ranking statistics again after this mega leg.
Average rankings after leg 6 in Cordoba
- Ricky & Cesar 1.5
- Rod & Leticia 3.16
- Juan & Shane 3.33
- Amber & Vinny 5
- Derek & Shelisa 5.16 (eliminated in Cordoba)
- Angie & Danny 5.66
- Yvonne & Melissa 6
- Sunny & Bizzy 7.83
So what do the statistics tell us? For a start, it is always interesting when the eliminated team isn't the weakest team, in this case, Derek & Shelisa performed so well earlier in the season that they still had an average of 5.16 upon elimination- that is still better than three other teams still in the race. Juan & Shane finally win a leg and I had always thought that they were one of the strongest teams in this season given that they tick two key boxes: Juan speaks Spanish at mother tongue level and they are undoubtedly the strongest team in this season. Thus I am surprised it took them this long to finally win a leg, but then again, it's also nice to know that this season isn't all about muscle power - for that, I recommend the Korean reality TV show Physical 100 which is interesting, but all about physical prowess. The original Physical 100 was so successful, they have now released season 2 and there is a third season in the planning. I can see Juan & Shane both doing well in a show of that format! Other than that, little has changed - the first and second teams were so close to each other, then the teams from 3rd to 7th came in within such a short space of time they ended up all standing on the mat together, so despite the fact that Sunny & Bizzy finished 7th, they were really only a few minutes behind the team in third place. Hence these 5 teams are really closer than the average ranking statistics above suggest.
Was this leg always going to be a two-horse race?
I'm afraid so. With only two teams in the first group (who have a 15 minute lead on the second group), it was unlikely for the second group to catch up with them - thus you would need a scenario where both the top two teams make costly mistakes before that could happen. Ricky & Cesar didn't run a great leg admittedly, they struggled with the first detour Boledora which involved throwing a weighted rope around a moving metal cow target, Ricky then struggled with the road block piecing together the rally route by completely overthinking it - it's just a jigsaw puzzle with 9 pieces. It was only at the second detour identifying the different cuts of beef where they caught up with Juan & Shane so whilst I've made it clear, I really like them as a team but this was not their best performance in this season given the number of mistakes they made. Juan & Shane otherwise ran a brilliant leg and if at least one team in the first group ran a good leg, there was just no way the teams in the second group could possibly catch up - this arrangement actually made the episode fairly predictable, I don't like that, the viewers prefer it when the teams in the middle of the pack have a realistic chance of catching the leaders. On one hand, you want to see teams that had done well in the previous leg be rewarded for their good performance, but on the other hand, you don't want to give them such a huge advantage that it becomes nearly impossible for other teams to catch them. This 15-minute head start format is too much, that should be only ten minutes.
What led to Derek & Shelisa's elimination in Cordoba?
Oh dear, I like this team and I was sad to see them go. They started out in the last group so the odds were always stacked against them. They made the fatal mistake of switching detours right at the start and whilst they weren't the only team who gave up on the Boledora detour, they were the only team who spent a considerable amount of time there before giving up - the other three teams took one look at that detour and immediately decided to switch. I think switching was a mistake for them - it might have been faster for Derek to have stayed there and patiently learnt how to throw that Boledora, sure that might have taken a while but he could get lucky - it would only take one good throw to get them out of there and Shelisa had no problems with that task. They then needed to run a flawless leg in order to stand a chance to catch up but Derek took a very long time on the detour at the race course when, like Ricky, he was overthinking what was a relatively simple task of piecing together a 9-piece jigsaw. But by that stage, they were already so far behind and the race effectively was over for them at that point. Thus with the other teams forming alliances to make sure that they were not going to get eliminated Derek & Shelisa's downfall was mostly due to them not being a part of the two alliance pacts.
How far apart were the first two detours?
Not too far actually, about 2.9 km or 1.8 miles by car, which would have taken the teams about 9 or 10 minutes to drive.
But wait, what was the point of the bicycle invention that grinds up plastic bottles?
I know they were trying to feature a local invention Reciu, but what was the point of that? It was a highly inefficient way to grind up plastic bottles for recycling given how much effort that all took. If you want to recycle a plastic bottle, the bottles must be ground down to form flakes that can be melted and reformed into new products - the bicycle contraption did not do that, it still left the plastic in fairly big strips which would then still require a machine to grind it down to the right size before it can be processed into something useful. Are you literally going to hire a bunch of people to get these bicycle-devices to grind bottles? No, it is far too labour intensive and ineffective, you would simply use a machine instead. In Cordoba, these Reciu bikes are available in a few stations around the cities but you then need someone to make the bikes, collect the plastic strips and still presumably drive them to a real recycling plant where they will be properly processed again. I'm not impressed with this invention - for my day job, I am a strategic advisor and I work on a lot of investment deals. If someone submitted this to me, I would just say, "no, I'm sorry, but it isn't a feasible or practical idea."
Did Derek & Shelisa get to do the second detour?
No, by the time they completed the second roadblock, all the other teams had already checked in and so they were told by the production crew to go directly to the pit stop. We had the unlikely scenario where a total of five teams were standing on the pit stop mat together at the same time, so it was very clear at that point that Derek & Shelisa were eliminated. If there was at least one other team still lagging behind, maybe the production would allow them to complete that last detour in order to have some footage that could be used to create drama about which team is going to come in last, but Derek & Shelisa weren't just last - they were dead last by a very long way and there was no way any kind of edit could have made that any less clear. Oh and it was such a shame nobody chose the other side of the detour - the fingerprints task. I would have liked to have seen it and made a comparison to the detour that all the other teams chose.
Alliances have been formed, but are they a good idea in TAR?
So with Derek & Shelisa eliminated, the only two teams left who are not in an alliance are Ricky & Cesar and Juan & Shane - perhaps the others are thinking that it is a forgone conclusion at this stage that we will definitely see Ricky & Cesar and Juan & Shane in the finals, the question then is which of the other teams will join them there, so they are quite happy to avoid elimination by being a part of an alliance simply to get to the next leg at this point. To be fair, the alliances did serve the teams well, though it did come across as a rather unequal relationship - let's take the trio for example: Danny provided vital navigation skills (though he wasn't that great in Cordoba as they did get a bit lost on the way to the soccer stadium. Amber kindly helped both Angie and Leticia out at the first roadblock with the jigsaw puzzle but what did Rod & Leticia bring to that relationship? They gladly benefited from all the help they could get when they needed it but when it came to sprinting to the pit stop, they were more than happy to abandon their friends in the alliance. I wouldn't like to be in an alliance with a team like that who simply takes and offers little or nothing in return. Therefore the alliance between Angie & Danny and Amber & Vinny works just fine, they really don't need Rod & Leticia at all in that mix - if anything, they really ought to conspire against them to get rid of them before the finals as you don't want to lose to them in the final leg, especially if it involves some kind of physical challenge and there's just no way you can beat Rod in any kind of physical challenge. Ironically, Rod & Leticia is the strongest team amongst those three, so why do they want to help Rod & Leticia at this stage? It is a rather unwise decision to get into an alliance with them - Angie & Danny need to be a lot more strategic if they want to keep up with the strongest teams in this season and make it all the way to the end.
Angie managed to get through both roadblocks, though I am sure many viewers were worried for her when they saw the brutal nature of bubble soccer with players getting knocked over so much. I'm sure you all shared my sense of relief when she scored a goal. This decision has enabled them to save Danny for the more physically demanding roadblocks in the next few legs so it was worth it. After all, Angie is the oldest racer left and they're making the best of a tricky situation.
Why was it so hot in Cordoba?
They were in Cordoba in early November 2022 - that would be the end of spring and beginning of summer in Argentina as they are in the Southern hemisphere. So day time temperatures are usually around 30 degrees Celsius (86 F) but could be as high as 38 C (100 F), so yes it can be quite brutal to do any kind of physical task in that kind of summer heat.
Rules are rules - helping another team is totally allowed!
Many people on social media bitched about the way Amber helped Angie and Leticia at the roadblock as well as the way some teams collaborated on the meat detour - well none of that is against the rules at all! What they did was perfectly permissible and allowed within the rules of TAR. If the racers do something that the producers realize would totally upset the viewers, then they would step in to forbid it. So for example, in the early seasons, there was no limit on the number of roadblocks that each team member could do, so you had the ridiculous situation in TAR S3 which was won by Flo & Zach, Flo only did one roadblock whilst Zach did the rest of the roadblocks- so by TAR S6, there was a rule that stated that no team member can perform more than 6 roadblocks to avoid a repeat of the way Flo got away with doing so little on S3. Likewise, in the older seasons, it was very common for teams to simply pay a taxi driver to lead them to where they need to go, thus removing any possibility of them getting lost on the way. This was prohibited since S17 in order to force teams to navigate their way there, either by reading a map or asking locals for directions. Thus when it comes to teams helping each other out during roadblocks and detours, there's actually nothing in the rules that forbids it - therefore it is completely allowed! So for the many people on social media who accused the teams of 'cheating' at the jigsaw roadblock, I say to you, learn the rules of TAR, they were not cheating at all, collaborating like that is totally permissible. I am a former national champion gymnast and we have a ton of rules in that sport, so it was the responsibility of the gymnasts and coaches to learn what the rules are before each competition - likewise, if you're going to be on TAR, you'll spend some time and effort learning what the rules are. So I have no doubt the racers have done that of course but if some casual viewer who isn't a mega-fan of TAR watches and then claims, "hey that's so unfair, that's cheating", I say to them, "you don't know the rules of TAR, you don't know what you're talking about." Yes there will be times when teams do things we don't like or even irk us, but that doesn't mean it is against the rules or that they should be penalized for it. For example, I have seen both on TAR US 8 and TAR Israel S5 teams actually stop to get hamburgers (yeah, like literally a meal break) instead of having any sense of urgency to race on. Was I irritated? Yes, totally, because they weren't taking the race seriously anymore at that point. But was it against the rules though, to take a break like that for some food? No.
Some of you who are big fans of TAR may be aware of a British series called Race Across The World (RATW), it is currently in its fifth season, though the current season is called the season 4 because there was a celebrity edition which somehow didn't count as it was considered different enough. But allow me to explain the nature of RATW as it is very different from TAR. The teams usually consist of poor working class people (sorry for being so blunt about it) who have never really had the chance to travel much: they might be pairs of best friends, siblings or parent-child duos. Some teams are not as desperately poor as others but at least the playing field is level because there isn't a single team that is clearly very well travelled and multilingual - they are all just as clueless as each other in the current season and at least the playing field is level. There is that sense of wonder when they visit somewhere like Japan for the very first time. This does make it fair, as some racers rise to the occasion whilst others just totally crumble under pressure. The first leg of RATW S5 is in Japan and one of the racers Isabel chanced upon an English speaking local and spontaneously compiled a bilingual phrase book to help them travel through Japan. But we often see racers make poor decisions and freak out under pressure when they find themselves in some rural location in Japan where no one speaks English and all the signs are in Japanese. I actually applied for every season for RATW so far and I can see why my husband and I were rejected: he used to live in Japan so he would have a massive advantage over the others, we both speak some Japanese and know Japan really well - we rolled our eyes at how the teams on RATW floundered in Japan - however, RATW was trying to put together a cast that the average British viewer on the BBC could relate to and my husband and I are simply not that. I have visited 78 countries and speak 30 languages (7 of them fluently) whilst your average British person can count on one hand how many countries they have visited and can speak only English. I spend between a quarter to a third of the year abroad on exotic holidays whilst your average British person is lucky to get one foreign holiday a year. But at least this is a much fairer arrangement as all the teams are equally crap and useless, so that is a deliberate casting decision to create a sense of fair play for the viewers. In sharp contrast, we saw some incredibly weak teams get eliminated early in TAR S36 as they never stood a chance against the better teams. Why not do a season where all the teams are equally crap like on RATW, so at least the playing field is level? This would make TAR more fair. This begs the question again: why do you even bother casting weak teams on TAR if you fully intend to cast some very strong teams?
I roll my eyes at how many inane, stupid comments there are on social media about TAR S36, we are already into E6 and there are still people out there questioning why this race was run only in Central and South America, totally unaware that S36 was actually S35 and why this was the case. There are also so many people who are just totally unaware of the rules of TAR and I'm like, it would take you less time to look up the answers to your question than to bitch about it online - it's a process called doing a Google search and I'd like to think it's part of our modern lives. Why live in ignorance when you can just look up the answers on Google? And there are idiots out there who respond with genuine surprise when someone is kind or patient enough to offer the answer, like, "but how did you know that? Are you from the production team?" No stupid, I just did a Google search. It took me about 20 seconds to do that, duh. I do know that I have other hardcore fans, including some former racers and people on production who do read my blog posts and they like what I blog here. This is what I do all the time for work - out of the blue, late on a Friday afternoon, a colleague asked me for help when she had a Chinese client doing business in South Africa and had a complex problem to resolve. The client was involved in an industry I wasn't particularly familiar with, but I said to my colleague, please give me at least two hours please: I then started researching everything I needed to know about a) the industry the Chinese client was involved in, b) the nature of that industry in South Africa and after an hour of reading, I was then able to contact the right person in Cape Town to solve that problem for the Chinese client - it took about an hour and a half of intense research and asking the right people for help, but I don't sit there in ignorance when I am faced with a situation like that. No, I am paid good money to solve problems, I know how to get the information I need to educate myself on any topic that lands on my desk so I am able to talk about it intelligently with my clients - I don't just have this knee-jerk reaction and offer the first thing that comes to my mind without first having done some research on the topic by going online or asking for an expert opinion. That is just an example of my approach to such a situation; if I wanted to know something about say the rules of TAR then I would first look it up on the internet, I wouldn't go on social media to ask a question as that would send the message, "nah, I'm just too lazy to do a Google search, so I am just going to tell the whole world just how ignorant I am."
So who will win the next leg and who will be eliminated next?
I think Juan & Shane will win the next leg and the next team to be eliminated will be Sunny & Bizzy. Juan & Shane certainly have hit their stride despite a slow start this season and there's no reason why they cannot maintain their first place especially since they are starting off in the first group on the next leg. As for my choice of Sunny & Bizzy, I'm sorry but there are no longer any weak teams left and so I have to look at their track record so far and they have had so many problems with navigation. The previews don't provide any real clues - we see Amber & Vinny arguing again, but that's nothing new for them and they are such a strong team, so they're not going to be eliminated just because of that. We know that teams go to Montevideo in Uruguay next, that's another city I know very well so I'm really looking forward to it.
Who is likely to be in the top 3 for the finals?
We are close enough to the finale to make some predictions now. For sure, Ricky & Cesar and Juan & Shane will be there, but the question is who will join them in the finals? Personally, I'd like to see a team like Amber & Vinny or Angie & Danny join them, though I think it is more probable that it will be a fight between Amber & Vinny and Rod & Leticia for that final spot in the finals. I doubt Yvonne & Melissa or Sunny & Bizzy have a real chance of getting to the finals with their performance so far and as much as I'm warming to Angie & Danny, I doubt they stand a chance against Amber & Vinny or Rod & Leticia. Between these two teams, I think Amber & Vinny are the smarter, more strategic team that understands how TAR works whilst Rod & Leticia are carried by Rod's physical prowess which can be useful during the physically challenging tasks such as the recycling bikes detour in this leg. Thus a lot of this would depend on what kind of tasks they will face in legs 9 and 10 and if for example, the teams are faced with a detour that is a puzzle or a memory challenge - that's when Rod's physical prowess is completely irrelevant and they might fall behind the other teams in such a scenario. Okay that's it from me for now, please feel free to leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
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