Hard work — and maybe a little luck
Toronto couple reveals what it took to win The Amazing Race Canada
Season 5 champions of The Amazing Race Canada, Sam and Paul, both agree that the hardest challenge in this year’s edition of the popular reality series happened in Tuesday night’s finale.
And it wasn’t scaling the side of a building in Quebec City or dangling alongside a waterfall — both of which happened in the final episode.
“I think the hardest challenge overall was the puzzle one in the finale,” Paul Mitskopoulos says. Teams had to put together a puzzle of Canada and match up past challenges to the cities in which they occurred. “I think the amount of stress every team was feeling was intense because whoever got that puzzle done fastest was going to win the Race and I wouldn’t say puzzles is our specialty.”
“Plus Ivana wasn’t helping things by standing over there and cheering on Korey,” med student Sam Lambert adds. “It affected Paul. Every time she’d cheer, Paul would say, ‘Did you hear that?’ And I had to keep telling him, ‘Don’t worry, we got this.’ ”
Going into Tuesday night’s finale against Kenneth and Ryan and Korey and Ivana, Sam and Paul, a twenty-something couple from Toronto, knew they had the most to lose after being the perceived front-runners throughout the season.
So best friends Kenneth and Ryan (a.k.a. Team Give’r) knew their margin for error was slim if they hoped to win the Race.
“We knew it was going to be a heated final and we knew we couldn’t make any mistakes; especially against Sam and Paul because they were dominant for the second half of the Race and they didn’t make many mistakes,” Ryan says. “We knew if we were going to win, we were going to have to be fast and efficient.”
Ivana says she and Korey tried to make sure of one thing: Getting into a good cab.
“One thing we really tried to do differently was make sure we got into a good cab; a cab that understood us and a cab that would stick around for the day,” Ivana says. “Sam and Paul had been killing it. We knew we couldn’t let them get even five minutes ahead of us.”
After The Amazing Race Canada kicked off in July with 10 teams, none of the finalists was surprised at the pairs that were left standing in the finale.
“Up until the point where (Montreal siblings) Adam and Andrea were eliminated, I think it was anyone’s game,” Kenneth says. “But once they got sent home I was pretty sure it was going to be these three teams. It was a long shot for me to think Karen and Bert were going to make it, but they almost did.
“During the Race, both Sam and I thought that any one of the other teams could have been in the finals,” Paul adds. “They were all so strong. But we’re not surprised it was Kenneth and Ryan and Korey and Ivana.””
In an earlier post-elimination interview, Edmonton’s Karen and Bert seemed intrigued by the idea of Team Give’r and Korey and Ivana teaming up early in the final leg to eliminate Sam and Paul.
But Ryan says the teams didn’t think about forming an alliance.
“We started with a bang, we wanted to end with a bang,” he says.
“It didn’t cross our minds that they would team up,” Paul admits. “I think at that point, you’re so focused on the end that the thought of teaming up with another team isn’t top of mind.”
All of the teams agree winning The Amazing Race Canada takes tremendous amount of skill, but Sam concedes there is an element of luck that affects the outcome of every leg.
“I would probably say 40 to 50 per cent of it is luck,” he says. “I think you need to set yourself up to do what you can using your prior knowledge and skill, but there are some challenges where there’s a lot of luck involved. Like the challenge of finding the queen bee in a hive of bees.”
Despite winning the $250,000 grand prize, which will help pay for Sam’s med school tuition, the Toronto couple will have to wait until next summer to take advantage of the vacation that came with being crowned Amazing Race Canada champs.
“I will have a couple of weeks next summer,” Sam says. “So we want to go somewhere in the South Pacific, so Hawaii, maybe Fiji.”
The Amazing Race Canada Season 5 will be available in its entirety on CraveTV starting Sept. 22.