Winning with one of the biggest leads in show history overachiever Cindy Chiang and her fiancé Ernie Halvorsen took the $1 million prize on the 19th season finale of “The Amazing Race” Sunday.
The two, who won the Express Pass on the first leg and went on to win two more legs along the way, easily beat two teams that had been saved only by non-elimination stops in the past.
One of those teams – Amani and Marcus Pollard were expected to have a huge advantage since the U.S. finish line was in their hometown of Atlanta. But Marcus couldn’t get out of the jet plane simulator challenge, nor could he stop spewing endless football metaphors along the way (he was a former NFL player). They ended up third but were happy enough to have finished the race.
Coming in second was occasionally battling daters Jeremy Cline and Sandy Draghi started the final leg at first place but took a bad tip that the place called the Dump they were looking for was a store in an old Home Depot (in fact named The Dump). What they were looking for was Margaret Mitchell’s house, and Cindy and Ernie figured it out first, and stayed ahead ever since.
In many ways the race seemed to deflate after the surprise ouster of snowboarders Tomy Szechin and Andy Finch, who up to then had almost a magical run, winning six of 10 legs.
The winning Chicago couple say they’ll use their earnings for the good of the world
“We would like to create an organization to multiply the million and help people in need,” Chaing said. Host Phil Koegan seemed pleased at that.