Phil Keoghan headed for Baltimore on his own race
As the long-running CBS reality TV show The Amazing Race, nears its season finale Sunday night, host Phil Keoghan (left) hits the home stretch of a 40-day, 3,500-mile bike tour that will bring him to Baltimore Wednesday morning before arriving at his New York City destination Friday. (Fans will be able to meet him 8 a.m.-9:30 a.m. Wednesday at White Marsh Mall's GNC.)
Keoghan, 41, took some time along the road Tuesday morning to look back at another winning season and his cross-country ride that started March 28 in Los Angeles. The secret to a good season are the contestants, he says. And while hosts are not supposed to have favorites, it sounds like he might be pulling for the mother-and-son team of Margaret and Luke Adams of Denver to win. Luke is deaf.
"I think this is one of the most dynamic teams we've had in years -- and quite a different casting selection," Keoghan said. "I was really excited when they first walked in the room during the early casting period and I thought the potential for having a team like that on the show would be tremendous. And what's so nice is to see that they've come this far."
Keoghan described Luke as "probably the biggest Race fan that we've ever had on the show as a racer -- he's been following the show since he was really young."
"And I think the most underestimated player in the race without a doubt is his mother," the host added. "She's very understated, but every time the pressure is on, she just seems to step up. I think people are now starting to appreciate her -- she earned a nickname later on from some of the contestants as the bionic woman. She's very strong mentally and physically. I think of that team as being one of the most captivating to watch in years."
While that's a rave, the brother-sister team of Tammy and Victor Jih, both Harvard Law School grads, got a decidedly mixed review.
"The lawyer brother-sister team is extremely smart, but what amazes me about a team like that is that they can be so smart, and yet in some practical sense they lack a lot of basic skills. These are not the people you would want to help you on the side of the road if you had a flat tire," he says.
As to the bike trip he's on, Keoghan says, the biggest "nightmare, headache and angst on this trip has been navigation."
When asked to explain what he means by that, he says, "How to get from Point A to Point B. Do you make a left or a right? You know, one wrong turn takes you two miles out of your way. Well, two miles on a bicycle is not only a lot of a time, it's a lot of effort."
He's been riding in the rain this week -- 100 miles a day. So, he says he's hoping for some moral support Wednesday morning at White Marsh Mall. So far, Keoghan says he has raised about $400,000 for MS on this bike trip.
Here are the address and phone number for GNC, the company with whom Keoghan has a promotional relationship: GNC at White Marsh Mall at 8200 Perry Hall Blvd. (410-931-7128).
(Above photo: Getty Images)
Comments
that's stupid, changing a tire has nothing to do with the Race. it is obvious that Phil favors a team on the basis of disability and not on personal character. M&L did not demonstrate good sportsmanship during the Race at all.
Posted by: Keith | May 6, 2009 5:24 AM
Keith, I have to disagree with you on that. Early on we were getting hammered with the "Deaf people can do anything" vibe, but they backed off of it very quickly and it's only been an issue that one time, when Maggie had her Killer Fatigue meltdown on the Amazing Bathmat a couple of weeks back. This team has definitely rocked nearly every task they've done, and even in their worst performances they've managed to keep themselves more or less together.
Tammy & Victor are also power players, but I think that all the time they spent in China has given them a bit of an edge that the others didn't have.
Jaime & Cara are a mystery to me. Somehow I get the feeling that they only managed to get where they are because someone else screwed up worse than they did. If they win, they wouldn't be THE most obnoxious team to win the Race, but they'd be pretty close to the top of that list.
Posted by: Claude | May 8, 2009 8:58 AM
Claude, all three teams boarded on the same plane and reached Hawaii at the same time, so any language advantage only helped them in the China race, but it was not the determining factor of the last leg where they won. I think the other teams were lucky to have Tammy and Victor who can speak Chinese because that allowed them to tag along and which they did, otherwise they would've gotten lost.
Margie is a strong women. She's smart and can deliver under pressure; however, Luke tends to falter when he can't solve something. Luke also tends to avoid the more difficult tasks and let his mother do them.
Posted by: Jane | May 14, 2009 12:19 PM