I’ve been watching The Amazing Race for as long as I can remember but there’s one aspect that really annoys me about it. I don’t remember it being an issue until maybe Season 32, but that aspect is teams sharing the answer to tasks.
In Season 32 there was an alliance between 4 teams from memory but throughout the season, one person would solve the task and just give the answer to the others which removed the competitiveness of the whole race. In future seasons we seen it on occasion but very rarely, then fast forward to Season 39 (the current season) and it is once again happening.
A lot of the teams were insistent on working together and getting along so there has been multiple alliances along the way and if it’s things such as sharing the location of a clue box or not U turning each other, I think that’s fine. My issue comes when one person solves a task and rather than each person have to solve that themselves, they simply just share the answer with others who essentially skip the task.
In episode 8, all the teams were insistent on eliminating Matt and Michelle who were easily the most dominant team this whole season. When it came to the Roadblock which was the final task before the pitstop, this is where everything went bad. They were meant to count all Budda statues within an area with a total of 582 which is a significant number. What most teams did was split up the count, then whoever got the correct answer would share it with the rest.
This resulted in probably 2 teams from separate groups actually getting the correct number, who then told the rest. The only person who seemed to solve it completely by themselves AND on their 3rd attempt was Michelle. Sadly this wasn’t enough though as all the other teams had too much of a lead due to the answer sharing. We’ve seen teams stuck at a challenge until the sun is down and Phil has to tell them to go home, this final challenge could have easily been one of those if it wasn’t for 2 people solving it and sharing it to the rest.
Phil and The Amazing Race team really needs to impose a penalty for this as it completely ruins the competitiveness of the game and honestly makes it a waste of time to watch. I’ll finish out the season but it won’t be as enjoyable after this lack of sportsmanship.