Hola once again guys and I must begin this post with a huge congratulations to Danny & Angie who were so close to winning this leg - they were moments behind Ricky & Cesar despite starting in the last group 30 minutes behind the leaders, yet they were so close to catching up with the leaders. If they were even in the second group, they would have won this leg. Listen, let me be the first to admit that at the beginning of this season, I wrote them off as a group with no chance and would be eliminated very early because I thought Angie would be at a disadvantage because of her age but sure enough, they have proven that they can indeed win this race. So far, the following teams have proven that they can beat Ricky & Cesar: Rod & Leticia, Amber & Vinny, Juan & Shane and Danny & Angie - but somehow, Ricky & Cesar just keep on winning because they're just so good at this. This is only TAR's second visit to Uruguay, having last visited there in S5 E1 and E2. Back then, they were mostly in another city, Punta del Este before briefly collecting a clue in Montevideo (in the middle of the night at a disco) and rushing off to Argentina. So really, this is the first time TAR US properly ran a leg in Montevideo. There is a lot to analyse, so let's start with the average ranking statistics after this leg.
Average ranking statistics after leg 7 in Montevideo
- Ricky & Cesar 1.42
- Rod & Leticia 3.14
- Juan & Shane 3.71
- Amber & Vinny 4.85
- Angie & Danny 5.14
- Yvonne & Melissa 5.85
- Sunny & Bizzy 7.71 (eliminated in Montevideo)
What do the statistics tell us after leg 7?
I got my predictions wrong last week, I thought Juan & Shane were in good position to win yet another leg after their stunning performance in leg 6, but due to Juan's illness, they really struggled on this leg and finished in 6th place, even losing out to Yvonne & Melissa who were 5th place. However, I did predict accurately that Sunny & Bizzy would be eliminated due to their inability to navigate and sure enough, that was something had been a recurring theme for them this season. Nothing has really changed in the average rankings after leg 7 - the strongest team won, the weakest team got eliminated but we have learned a few things from this leg which produced some surprising results once we look at what was happening in the middle of the pack. I have already talked about how Danny & Angie have grown on me throughout this season, now I really wanna see them in the finals but they are still up against some strong competition in the next leg. Juan & Shane have demonstrated how you can have a bad day in the office if you're forced to go into work when you're feeling really sick - that's unfortunate but I am glad they lived to fight another day. Being a geek who analyses data to look for trends, I want to split the teams up into three categories: teams who have improved over time, teams who have deteriorated over time, teams who have stayed constant and teams who are so erratic they do not fit into any of the above. The teams who have improved over time are: Angie & Danny and Amber & Vinny. The team who has deteriorated over time are: Rod & Leticia. The teams who are very constant are Ricky & Cesar and Yvonne & Melissa whilst the team is erratic is Amber & Vinny. I think this is an interesting way to predict which teams will make it to the end, take Derek & Shelisa for example - they had a very strong start and came across as a credible team, but they just kept performing worse and worse over the course of the race until they finally got eliminated in leg 6. It couldn't simply be luck to chalk up three 3rd place finishes in a row which they achieved early in the season, they were a great team but I can only guess that it was simply fatigue that got to them in the end, which impacted their performance to the point where they kept making costly mistakes. Thus in the case of Rod & Leticia, their performance didn't deteriorate quite the way Derek & Shelisa's did, but then they were never in a position to challenge for a win in the last few legs, which makes me think that just like Derek & Shelisa there might probably be an element of fatigue affecting them as well.
Amber & Vinny were painful to watch, holy crap.
Vinny has gotten a lot of grief on social media already for the way he spoke to Amber on this leg. I am not here to defend Vinny, I think he handled the situation very badly and they went into this experience woefully unprepared. They should have laid out ground rules about how they ought to handle stressful situations which inevitably would happen on the race (like when they couldn't remember where they parked the car) - blaming each other or speaking to each other harshly simply increases the tension and they don't realize that doing so only makes matters worse. At times like that, you have to take a step back and simply say, it doesn't matter whose fault it was or who was in the right/wrong, we need to deescalate as the tension is really detrimental to our performance. They could have won this leg, but Vinny was so nasty to Amber that he shattered her self-confidence going into the drum detour, she was not in any state of mind to learn the routine and that led to them falling from first to 4th on this leg. This team is capable of so much if they do not self-destruct by turning on each other like that, it shows a certain amount of emotional immaturity on the part of Vinny - he needs to understand that lashing out at Amber when things go wrong may be a reflex on his part, but it only harms them as a team and would come back to haunt him when it affects the team's performance. You do not participate as an individual but as a team in TAR and you need to support your team mate, not blame them for slowing you down and making it all about you. If Vinny can bite his tongue and control his temper, they can easily make it into the final and even win but if he allows his big mouth to get the better of him, then he would be the reason why they do not progress any further in this process. I'm not even thinking beyond TAR S36 for Amber, but so many people on social media have said that she ought to dump Vinny if he has shown his true colours in the way he has treated her and she deserves a lot better than that - imagine being married to someone who treats you like that and blames it on being under stress? Hell no. This just reminds me of Jonathan & Victoria from TAR S6 - Jonathan was so ridiculously abusive to Victoria on the race and sure enough, they eventually got divorced (though not immediately after the race). I shook my head and thought, what took Victoria so long to come to her senses and divorce the abusive husband? Surely everyone on the internet was screaming at her, "you must divorce that Jonathan at once - he is evil!" So, let's see what happens to Amber & Vinny in due course.
Were Sunny & Bizzy doomed from the start?
Not really, there were three teams in the last group and one of the teams from that group Angie & Danny caught up with the leaders, proving that if you play your cards right and run a flawless leg, you can indeed catch up. Bizzy had experience with welding and should have blitzed through that roadblock quite quickly, but it was really their navigational woes that put them so far behind that they had no real chance of escpaing elimination. They had to look for Plaza de la Fuente in Ciudad Vieja, now as a Spanish speaker, I immediately know you're looking for "the square of the fountain in the old town" as I understood those words in Spanish. But as neither Sunny nor Bizzy spoke any Spanish, they got hopelessly lost and couldn't really find anyone to help them with good directions. I've spent time in Montevideo and whilst it is true that the locals don't speak much English, the locals there are generally very friendly and helpful so they would be glad to help you, even if they would only be able to communicate in Spanish. If you knew that you were looking for something in the old town, you would never venture into the port you'll be looking for a historical area with old buildings everywhere. This team were never great with navigation in the first place and in the past, they got away with mistakes because there were other weaker teams still around but at this stage, there is little room for errors like that. Oh well, at least they got to see a lot more of Montevideo than the other teams - I recognized a lot of the famous landmarks in central Montevideo they went to as they got hopelessly lost. Pardon me for stating the obvious but there's a lot more to Montevideo than was featured in this episode. Other teams like Yvonne & Melissa and Juan & Shane made mistakes in this leg as well, but Sunny & Bizzy simply wasted too much time getting lost in Montevideo to recover from their mistake.
Singing or drumming - which detour would you have chosen?
Either really, they're both easy. The singing wasn't difficult if you could speak Spanish, then memorizing the lyrics would be rather straightforward. But at the same time, the drumming wasn't complicated either given that it was a rather simple pattern that the racers had to follow. Of course if the racers didn't feel confident about their ability to memorize lyrics in Spanish, then they could always do the drumming. This was a case of both sides of the detour being relatively simple which frustrates me; whilst it clearly showcases an aspect of the local culture, I would rather see complex and difficult detours which really challenge the racers and that creates the possibility of changing the order of the teams when some of them struggle with the detour. In this case, it had relatively little impact on the outcome as most teams just came and left in the order they arrived there. In fact, Amber & Vinny getting lost whilst looking for their car gave the episode some much needed drama for that part of the leg, which frankly was not that interesting, given just how straightforward it was.
Why didn't the teams learn Spanish for TAR?
So from the time you are informed that you are cast for the next season to the time you start racing, you have approximately two months if you're lucky. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes even less - the reason why time is so tight is because the production team will start with thousands, even tens of thousands of applicants and they are slowly narrowing the list down to the point where they can make a final decision on who to feature in the next season. At that point, you need to prepare yourself physically and mentally - physically means training hard everyday to improve your stamina whilst mentally probably means learning some foreign languages. You can never become fluent in a foreign language in that little time but the strategy that you should adopt is to learn enough to be able to ask for directions in at least ten of the world's most spoken languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Hindi, Turkish, German and Mandarin to begin with and if you have any clue about where you might be going, you need to add that as well. Now you might argue, Sunny and Bizzy work as firefighters and have a family, they have to work and take care of their kids, they don't have time to learn Spanish or any other language on top of everything they have to do. Well I say, tough then they are not going to win a million dollars on TAR if they get eliminated because they can't work out that their next clue box is in the old town as they don't know what the words 'ciudad vieja' mean. I am not saying that you need to be fluent in ten languages to go on TAR, but you only need to know enough of the basics to ask for directions in that language like Vinny. He clearly doesn't speak Spanish fluently, but he has enough knowledge of the basics to be able to interact with someone who doesn't speak a word of English to get directions - it probably would take you a day or two to make sure you master the basics of a language to that level. Even if you know absolutely nothing of that language, it would mean memorizing about 50 words of that language. Now that's nothing compared to some of the more complex topics that I had to memorize to get through my exams at university and yes, some people are just better than others at memorizing information. But if you knew you had the chance to win a million dollars, wouldn't you at least spend money getting a babysitter, paying for some help at home and taking a few days off work just to prepare yourself for the race and increase your chances of winning? You can give all kinds of excuses as to why you didn't prepare (I have work, I have to take care of my kids), but you can't cash in those excuses for a million dollars. Who are you trying to kid? Will they ever earn a million dollars as firefighters? No - this was their best shot and they should've made the most of this opportunity.
Who will win the next leg in Barbados and who will be eliminated next?
I'm going to default to the statistics and say that Ricky & Cesar will win again in Barbados and the weakest team Yvonne & Melissa might be eliminated but the previews suggest something different. The playing field is a lot more level in Barbados as it is an English speaking country, although given the way Amber & Vinny ran such a terrible leg in Montevideo, I wonder if they would be able to keep their cool to perform well or if they would fight again and totally self-destruct. If that does happen, then that might spare Yvonne & Melissa from elimination. There's really nothing wrong with Yvonne & Melissa, but they are a 'middle of the pack' team that has never finished higher than 5th place - at this stage of the race, the middle of the pack has already become the very back of the pack and they have not shown that they have what it takes to beat the other very strong teams in this season and they are counting on things going very wrong for the other teams to stay in the race. However, the preview makes a big deal about Angie & Danny losing their film crew whilst driving a kind of small two-seater car. This does confuse me somewhat, did Angie forget to signal so the crew didn't know where she was going? Or was it simply a mistake that the driver of the crew made and if that was the case, how could the team be penalized for that? But if it was Angie's fault, does this mean that they will be eliminated next? Given this is an unusual situation we have not seen before on TAR, I am unable to guess what might happen but I certainly hope Angie & Danny do stay in the race somehow despite all this. It would be painful to see them get eliminated after they had run such a brilliant leg in Montevideo! Then again, all it takes is one tough roadblock and a team could potentially fall behind. In the second preview released for E8, we see Leticia struggling with a modified street tennis game roadblock and she was not having a good time at all. Some people just don't have good hand-eye coordination for this kind of racket games. Perhaps they wanted to save Rod for something more physical in the later legs, but if Leticia takes a very long time to finish that roadblock, they might be in danger of elimination in Barbados. So based on the previews, I think Yvonne & Melissa will survive and it'll be either Angie & Danny or Rod & Leticia who will be eliminated next in Barbados.
Was the casting unfair in TAR S36?
I want to address another issue that has been discussed a lot on social media - was the casting in this season really unfair? Ricky & Cesar have never finished outside the top 2 so far and are the favourites to win this season, they have won four out of the seven legs so far. Whilst they are my favourite team this season (so sue me, I am playing favourites here), I don't think we can take it for granted that they will definitely win. We have seen Rod & Leticia and Juan & Shane beat them to the pit stop in legs 1, 2 and 5. And if we were to look closely at what happened in E3, Amber & Vinny came from behind in the second group to finish 2nd despite having a 15 minute deficit. Likewise, in this leg, Angie & Danny finished 2nd despite having a 30 minute deficit. The only team left that has no hope at all in beating Ricky & Cesar are Yvonne and Melissa who have never even come close to them, but otherwise, I see the top five teams as very strong teams who all have a reasonably good chance of winning even if Ricky & Cesar are the favourites so far. This does beg the question, why only cast five strong teams then? Why not just cast 13 strong teams in this season? Or even by the same token, cast 13 weak teams this season, so we at least have a level playing field as the concept of 'fairness' is very important to the viewers. I don't think these people hate Ricky & Cesar for being this good, rather they are criticizing the casting decisions made by the production team. If anything, it is the format of letting the groups set off in groups with a 15 minute interval between each group that tended to favour the groups who are at the front of the pack - Ricky & Cesar have benefited from this rule a lot in this season. If you think this is unfair, please hate the game not the player, then kindly direct your hatred and anger at the producers, not Ricky & Cesar - you can't blame them for simply being brilliant.
Finally, I need to rant.
There is so much crap on social media I swear and it gets to the point where I don't even want to look at it. Firstly, if you want to post something online, at least check the name of the racers you're talking about - some of these people can't even get the name of the racers right. Rod has been referred to as Ron or Rob, or even just "that black guy". Whilst Shelisa has an unusual name, I am shocked at the number of people who can't spell her name on social media. She has been referred to as anything from Sheila to Lisa to even Chelsea. Seriously? What is wrong with these people? Look, let me give you a simple anecdote from work this week - during a meeting, a client asked me, "what is the population of Gabon?" I told him I wasn't sure, I thought it was about 2 million but I wanted to double check. So I took out my phone and asked Siri, "what is the population of Gabon?" I got the answer within seconds, the population of Gabon is 2.4 million. Was that rocket science? No, I did a Google search - duh. But I would rather than a few moments doing a Google search rather than make a wild guess and get the answer wrong. I'm sure my client appreciates the fact that I pay great attention to detail and wanted to make sure we were working with all the most accurate data. Thus if I wanted to voice an opinion on social media, I'd spend a few moment verifying the facts before posting anything because I don't want to look like an idiot. Look, I'm old enough to remember life before Google - I have a memory from 1991 - there was this hit by British band KLF called 3 AM Eternal with a lot of nonsense lyrics. There was this line in the song which was "ancients of Mumu" which wasn't sung very clearly and I remember debating with someone at the gym what that line actually was - we made loads of calculated guesses but we were both wrong, though back then, since it was 1991, we couldn't just Google the lyrics of the song. In the end, we just had to agree to disagree what that line actually was and live in ignorance. That was what life was like before Google and we were all very ignorant back then. Now we have the power to do a Google search anytime we want to get the information we need, why would people still get simple things like the name of the racers wrong or ask simple questions on social media about TAR like, "is there a limit to how many roadblocks a racer can do?" Isn't it much easier (and a lot faster) to just Google the information you need than to ask questions on social media? Why do people turn to social media, post a question, wait for someone to answer the question (with the risk that someone might post an incorrect answer) instead of just using Google to find the answer? So that's it from me on this episode, leave a comment below and let me know what you think and many thanks for reading!
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