AMAZING FINISH
Calgarians race to victory
Calgary lovebirds and first responders Courtney Berglind and Adam Kovacs were the surprise winners of the sixth season of Amazing Race Canada.
The series ended Tuesday night with an action-packed finale that took place in Calgary and Banff, which was home turf for the winning team.
Nevertheless, they were considered underdogs, having not won any of the legs leading up to the win. Sibling Mounties Taylor and Courtney Callen had won five legs by that point and took an early lead in Tuesday’s episode, which was filmed in a secretive shoot in mid-May.
“It is very weird,” Berglind said in an interview with Postmedia, a few hours after crossing the finish line. “It has not set in yet. We are a little bit sleep-deprived. It’s just a very odd feeling.”
The series started with 10 teams when it debuted in July. By the time the production hit Banff, it was down to three: Berglind and Kovacs, the Callens and Fort McMurray youth mentors/coaches Kwame Osei and Dylan Elias.
The wide-ranging episode had the three teams engaged in various challenges or Roadblocks.
Those included memorizing and reciting automatic terminal information system messages at the air traffic control tower at Calgary International Airport; dogsledding and GT Racing on the ski hill at Sunshine Village; searching for souvenirs along Banff Avenue, and traversing and rafting along the Bow River. The episode ended at Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course, where Berglind and Kovacs were the first to cross the finish line.
They won $250,000, matching Chevrolet Traverse Redlines and a trip around the world.
Kovacs said learning that the final leg would be close to their hometown was both a bonus and a little daunting.
“To find out we were coming home, it was one of the few times in life that I felt that much joy,” he said. “But it was funny. To find out we were going to be competing on our own turf, we had the feeling of a hometown advantage but almost more pressure because if we screwed up in the place we loved and cared about the most, we would look really bad.”
Like all competitors for Season 6, Berglind and Kovacs were nominated by friends for the show, which focused on Canadian heroes.
Berglind is a nurse at Rockyview General Hospital and Kovacs is a Calgary firefighter. They met seven years ago when Berglind was tending bar at an event where Kovacs was being auctioned off for charity. The pair will be married in November.
Berglind said all 18 of their Amazing Race Canada rivals have been invited to their wedding.