Season 11
The Amazing Race 11 (titled The Amazing Race: All-Stars) is the 11th instalment of the popular reality television competition, The Amazing Race. The Amazing Race 11 features 11 teams of two people with a pre-existing relationship, in a race around the world.
Seven of the series' 10 previous editions will be represented in the all-stars competition, with the show's first, third, seventh, and tenth editions each landing two The Amazing Race: All-Stars teams.
Absent from the competition are any teams from The Amazing Race 4, The Amazing Race 6, or the show's disastrous The Amazing Race: Family Edition eighth edition.
As in previous seasons, The Amazing Race: All-Stars' winning team will receive $1,000,000.
According to executive producer Bertram Van Munster, the producers had a hard time deciding which of The Amazing Race's 100+ former teams to invite back for the All-Stars edition.
Rather than basing their casting decisions on only the strength of each team's previous Race finish, the producers also took the teams' personal stories into consideration.
Unlike the 2004 All-Stars edition of Survivor, that included four former Survivor winners, The Amazing Race: All-Stars features only one team of previous winners - The Amazing Race 7's Uchenna and Joyce Agu (The Amazing Race: All-Stars' cast does however include Amber Mariano, Survivor: All-Stars' winner and one half of The Amazing Race 7's returning runner-up team.)
The cast also features two former racers who competed with friends their first time around - Eric Sanchez and Danielle Turner, who after competing against each other on The Amazing Race 9 began dating.
Balancing them out will be a former dating couple that's since broken up and is now competing as "just friends," The Amazing Race 3's Jill Aquilino and John Vito Pietanza.
The Amazing Race: All-Stars requires the teams travel more than 45,000 miles and visit five continents in only 28 days. Stops include Argentina, Mozambique and Chile.
Season 11 Teams
Joe Baldassare and Bill Bartek
Life partners
(The Amazing Race 1, third place)
Joe is a 56-year-old mineral trading company owner. Bill is a 53-year-old realtor. The couple lives in Laguna Niguel, CA.
Team Guido from Season 1 returns for another attempt at the $1 million prize. Claiming they've had their bags packed since they returned home from the first season, they are ready to go.
Kevin O'Connor and Drew Feinberg
Lifelong friends
(The Amazing Race 1, fourth place)
Kevin is a 40-year-old forensic accountant from Bayonne, NJ. Drew is a 41-year-old Senior Court Officer from Staten Island, NY.
America's favourite fraternity brothers are all grown up and married. They fell just short of the million dollars the first time around and are eager for another shot.
Ozwald Mendez and Danny Jimenez
Best friends
(The Amazing Race 2, fourth place)
Ozwald is a 36-year-old from New York, NY who works in advertising. Danny is a 41-year-old paralegal from Miami, FL.
These best friends from Season 2 had a falling out several years ago, but have since mended their relationship and claim to be better friends now than they've ever been during their previous 12 years of friendship.
John Vito Pietanza and Jill Aquilino
Formerly dating
(The Amazing Race 3, fifth place)
John is a 32-year-old trader from New York, NY. Jill is a 29-year-old product controller from New York, NY.
Season 3's John Vito and Jill are back for another chance at winning the $1-million prize. What's different this time around? These former lovebirds are no longer romantically involved.
Teri Pollack and Ian Pollack
Married parents
(The Amazing Race 3, second place)
Teri is a 53-year-old homemaker. Ian is a 54-year-old private investigator and retired police lieutenant. The couple lives in Palm City, FL.
Second place in Season 3 just wasn't good enough for this dynamic duo. Teri and Ian are still the oldest players to ever finish in second place in the Amazing Race and they are back to show that they haven't lost a step.
Charla Baklayan Faddoul and Mirna Hindoyan
Cousins
(The Amazing Race 5, sixth place)
Charla is a 30-year-old real estate investor. Mirna is a 30-year-old attorney. Both cousins live in Towson, MD.
Charla and Mirna captured America's hearts the first time around. They are proud of the way they played the game and look forward to another trip around the world together.
Uchenna Agu and Joyce Agu
Married couple
(The Amazing Race 7, first place)
Uchenna is a 42-year-old land developer. Joyce is a 46-year-old who works in sales. The couple lives in Houston, TX.
Uchenna and Joyce are one of the most beloved teams from any season of Race. The winners of Season 7, Uchenna and Joyce were relentless and stopped at nothing to win the $1-million prize... including shaving their heads.
Rob Mariano and Amber Mariano
Married couple
(The Amazing Race 7, second place)
Now married, 30-year-old Rob and 28-year-old Amber live in Pensacola,FL when not busy bouncing from one reality TV gig to together.
America's Sweethearts met, fell in love and got married...all in front of the cameras, beginning with the filming of Survivor: All-Stars, where Rob finished in second place to Amber. They finished as the runners-up to Joyce and Uchenna in Season 7. To what lengths will Rob and Amber go to avoid finishing as the runner-up yet again?
Eric Sanchez and Danielle Turner
Dating couple
(The Amazing Race 9, second place and seventh place)
Eric is a 28-year-old waiter from Deerfield Beach, FL. Danielle is a 23-year-old bartender from Staten Island, NY.
This unique duo met while racing against each other during Season 9. During their travels, they developed a bond which evolved into a romance and the two have been dating for the past year. Will the combination of big-city girl and self-proclaimed "beach bum" be a force to reckon with or will the other Teams discount this new pair who has never raced together as Team?
Dustin Seltzer and Kandice Pelletier
Beauty queens
(The Amazing Race 10, fourth place)
Dustin - who has gotten married since The Amazing Race 10 - is a 25-year-old graduate student from Seattle, WA. Kandice is a 25-year-old New York University student from New York, NY.
These former Beauty Queens are back for a second chance and are more determined than ever to prove to the world that they aren't just pretty faces. Proven to be fierce competitors during the 10th instalment of Race, Dustin and Kandice are focused and have their sights set on becoming the first all-female team to win the $1-million prize.
David Conley, Jr. and Mary Conley
Coal miner and wife
(The Amazing Race 10, sixth place)
David is a 33-year-old coal miner. Mary is a 32-year-old homemaker. The couple lives in Stone, KY.
Everybody's favourite coal miner and his wife are back for another trek around the world. David and Mary, the wide-eyed couple from Stone, Ky. are ready to compete and believe they have what it takes to bring home the $1-million prize for their children.
Concept
The original idea for The Amazing Race began as a bet between current producers Elise Doganieri and Bertram van Munster, with van Munster challenging Doganieri to develop a concept for a TV show in less than five minutes while both were attending a trade convention.
With Doganieri's suggestion of a race around the world, the two refined the concept and sold it to CBS.
Format
The present form of The Amazing Race, for the most part, has not changed from the first season. The race utilizes progressive elimination: the last team to arrive at a designated checkpoint (Pit Stop) leaves the game.
The race starts in a US city. Teams must then follow clues and instructions and make their way to checkpoints in places around the world, eventually racing back to the finish line in the US.
Along the way they perform tasks that represent the culture of the present country or city.
Tasks include Detours (an option between two tasks of various difficulty) and Roadblocks (a task that can be done by only one member of a team); additionally, other optional markers, if reached first, can provide a team with a Fast Forward (allowing a team to skip remaining tasks and go to the checkpoint), a Yield (the ability to delay another team for a short amount of time) or a U-Turn (the ability to force another team to do the other detour they didn't choose).
Teams race with limited possessions and are given a fixed amount of money for all travel purposes save for airline tickets, which are paid for by production-issued credit cards.
Production
The production of The Amazing Race is an extremely difficult aspect, given that unlike other reality TV shows, the show continues to move about the world all the time.
Despite such difficulties, the show has been nominated twenty times for Primetime Emmy Awards, winning ten times.
Pre-race
Production will scope out several locations for the race and will send people to investigate potential tasks and activities to be performed in the tasks. Production also must work with the local governments to acquire filming rights and allowances for the race.
Most of the tasks are attempted by production to determine the difficulty and timing with each task as well as to determine how to shoot that task.
Teams are selected through a multi-step interview process, usually starting with country-wide interviews at a few major cities. Once teams have been selected, teams are given a list of countries that they will need to apply for visas for.
To avoid spoiling too much of the race, this list includes more countries than are planned to be visited, so that teams cannot plan on where they will be visiting.
For clothing, teams are generally asked to plan for coordinating clothes, at least in the first few legs, to help with team identity and differentiation.
Some teams have taken it upon themselves to procure custom clothes with their personal team moniker or names (examples include Joe & Bill from Season 1, Ken & Gerard and Aaron & Arianne from Season 3, Marshall & Lance and Linda & Karen from Season 5, Joseph & Monica from Season 9, and Erwin & Godwin from Season 10), though these are not required.
A few days before the race, teams and last minute replacements are flown into the same city (usually not the same as the actual start city) and sequestered in a hotel.
Teams are asked to prepare their bags for the race, and production verifies the contents, removing any items prohibited by the race. On the day before or the day of the race, teams are then flown to the actual starting city and to the start line.
Prior to actually starting the race, teams are asked to take off by foot from the starting line several times in order to get several shots of the teams both in close-up and while racing away.
During the race
Each team is accompanied by a two-person camera crew (camera operator/sound mixer), who must stay with the team at all times, except at Pit Stops and during certain Detours or Roadblocks. The crews rotate between teams at Pit Stops to avoid any possible favouritism that may develop between a team and its crew.
The camera crew must be able to ride with the team when they take transportation such as cabs or planes.
Even though the program shows teams asking for only two tickets, they actually have to purchase four tickets to account for the camera crew; what usually happens is that teams first ask the agents for four tickets, and then the camera crew re-shoots the request, this time only asking for two.
Similarly, the camera crew will often ask teams to redo certain actions during a leg in order to get a better camera angle (such as getting into and out of taxis), or to adjust the wireless microphones that each team member is wearing.
These events can lead to "production difficulties", which are usually credited to the team when they reach the Pit Stop.
Many Detours and Roadblocks use special cameras to get more dramatic shots of the racers as they complete the task, such as helmet-mounted cameras for climbing, rappelling, and sky-diving stunts.
The producers may also use helicopters and high overhead cranes to get wide-area camera footage when appropriate.
There are also special camera crews known as 'Zone' cameras that are used near clue boxes, Detours, and Roadblocks, which take over for the team's assigned camera crew in order to get more dramatic shots.
If a team should engage with a non-Race participant, they will need to have the camera crew get the consent of that person to be used on camera via agreement forms. Footage of people that have not consented is either not used, or is used with the person's face pixelized out.
The production team tends to arrive in a country a day or a half-day before the racers themselves arrive; however, there have been times that the lead production crew, including Phil Keoghan, has flown along with the racers into that country.
While the teams are racing, production sets up shots of Phil describing the various tasks, and then prepares for the arrival at the Pit Stop. In a few cases, production had barely arrived just before the teams started to arrive at the Pit Stop.
While in a country, the various production crews keep apprised of the status of each team in order to prepare the location for the arrivals. For example, clue boxes are only set up minutes before the first team arrives to prevent non-racers from getting involved or stealing clues.
Additionally, any obvious penalties or missed tasks are relayed to the Pit Stop crew so that Phil can inform teams appropriately of these.
Once teams have arrived at the Pit Stop, production checks with each camera crew to identify if any additional penalties or time credits are necessary.
When teams check in, they are usually requested to move to the lodging area for the Pit Stop, though during Season 1 this usually did not occur, as teams can be seen hanging around the Pit Stop to greet the other teams as they arrived.
The eliminated team usually gets a chance to say goodbye to the remaining racers. Teams eliminated early in the race are then flown to a common location known as "Sequesterville" where teams are allowed to relax and sight-see (though with restrictions), until they are then flown to the final city for the very end of the Race.
The 4th, 5th, and 6th place teams do not necessarily go to Sequesterville; instead, they may either accompany production through the last few legs and meet up with the rest of the eliminated teams at the finish line (in order to cut down on travel costs), or they may be asked to perform "decoy runs", usually flying into the final city or a different city with a camera crew, a day or so before the final three teams arrive, in order to throw off potential spoilers for the final teams.
The finish line is usually located in an isolated spot, and planned so that teams will arrive mid-day during a weekday, or early on a Saturday or Sunday, in order to reduce the amount of potential sightings of the final teams.
Post-race
All teams are compensated for the time missed from their jobs, though the amount is undisclosed and confidential.
As with most reality TV shows, teams are not allowed to reveal their performance on the race until the episode with their elimination has aired (or, in the case of the final three teams, until after the season finale).
Even after their elimination episode has aired, teams are not allowed to reveal any events, eliminations, or the ultimate winners of the race.
In the past, eliminated teams have typically been asked to appear for an interview on The Early Show on CBS on the day after the airing of their elimination episode, though this practice has been hit-or-miss in later seasons.
Each episode is worked on by a separate team of editors as soon as the race starts; as such, there are usually no "story arcs" unless they develop naturally over the course of the season (for example, the dislike of most of the teams in Season 1 towards Joe and Bill, or the so-called Six Pack/Backpack alliance in Season 10).
Complete tasks have been known to be cut from an episode, usually due to the lack of impact on race standings for that task.
Roadblocks are most commonly edited out should teams depart in the same order as they arrive, though evidence for these Roadblocks can be found from footage still shown, interviews with racers, or from spoiler information.
The opening credits for the first season used a combination of pictures of locations in the race and teams, both posing as well as performing tasks during the race. However, many fans were able to identify the elimination order simply based on these task shots.
Since then, the introduction sequence has used only a combination of location shots from both the current race as well as past races, and only teams posing at their residence or home city, reducing the amount of spoiler content within the introduction.
In two instances of the race, a natural disaster occurred in an area after the race was filmed going through it, but prior to the first episode of the season airing; specifically the 2004 tsunami which struck Sri Lanka during Season 6, and Hurricane Katrina which struck New Orleans during Season 8.
In the latter case, one of the teams racing, the Schroeder family, lost their home in the disaster.
In both cases, the episodes which included race legs within these areas were preceded by a message, read by Phil, which addressed the situation and expressed solidarity with the people in the affected regions.
Glossary
Detour
A choice between two different ways to accomplish a goal or reach a destination. On the surface, one may seem easy but involves some sort of twist; the other may seem difficult but in the end may be the quicker choice.
Pitstop
The final destination for each leg of the Race, at which point a Team must clock in. The last Team to arrive at most Pitstops is eliminated from the Race. A Team will leave the Pit Stop 12 hours after they clock in. For instance, a Team that clocks in at 9am will leave at 9pm.
Fast Forward
Two pre-determined legs have one Fast Forward, which allows the Team that completes the Fast Forward task first to proceed directly to the next Pitstop without having to do any further tasks, including Detours or Roadblocks on the way.
The trick is that only the first Team to find and complete the Fast Forward on the leg may use it; any subsequent Team that finds it will have wasted their time and must go back and complete all tasks.
In addition, a Team may claim only one Fast Forward during the entire Race.
Roadblock
A task in which only one member of the two-person Team may participate. In most cases, the non-participant must wait for the participant to accomplish the goal.
Route Marker
Yellow and white flag that marks the locations of further instructions.
Yield
Each leg of the Race has a Yield point. Teams must stop at the Yield location to do two things before continuing along the course: 1) They must check to see if they have been Yielded by another Team; 2) If no Team has been Yielded, they must decide whether to use the Yield or not.
If a Team is Yielded, they must turn over the hourglass and wait until all the sand runs out before they may continue with the Race.
A Team may use the Yield to stop another Team only once throughout the entire course of the Race. However, there is no limit to the number of times that a Team can be Yielded by the other Teams.