‘Amazing Race 14′: Chats with winners and others at season’s end

Though they were behind most of last night’s episode, the brother-sister team of Tammy and Victor Jih ended up winning the 14th season of “The Amazing Race.”

Both are Harvard-educated attorneys — Victor, 35, works in Century City and Tammy, 26, in San Francisco — who started Season 14 with Victor taking on the role of big brother, bossing his little sister around. But when he led them on the wrong path in Romania, Victor finally realized his sister was a grown-up and the two became strong collaborators.

Here’s a conversation we had with them Monday.

Q: Congratulations!

Tammy and Victor: Thank you.

Q: What was so interesting about you two is that your relationship changed so much during the course of the race.

Victor: Originally, my mom, when she heard that we wanted to go on the show, she said, “Why would you ever want to do that?” And the first thing she told us when we went was “just don’t fight with each other.” After the show, we came on home and we got along fine. It has been great for her and my dad to watch it and she thinks it’s been great for us, even though it’s embarrassing at times; they said, “How often do you get to put a mirror or yourself and see yourself as other people see you?” They have actually enjoyed it as a growing experience for us.:

Q: Why did you decide to do the race?

Tammy: I think we both did the race because it is an incredible adventure and an opportunity to step outside of our normal lives. We both work incredibly hard and have routine lives. This is an opportunity to travel the world and meet people, challenge ourselves and do things we are not good at and the chance to do it together.

Victor: One of my main objectives was to mix up my life a little bit. I think I have always done what I was supposed to do and having gone from school to the work world, you sort of fall into the routine. What is go great about “The Amazing Race” is it allows people to actually think about: “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I did this?” I just loved the idea of putting myself out of my comfort zone.

Q: Were you athletic before the race?

Victor: We were labeled as “reasonably athletic.” I was real young when I was in high school. I think I was 16 when I graduated from high school. I couldn’t run; I was always the last picked. I think my dad always told my sister and me that we were not blessed with athletic genes and I think we both realized we are more fit and capable of physical things than we thought we were.

Tammy: For me growing up, P.E. was my hardest class, as embarrassing as that is. As I’ve gotten older, I love yoga and that has really increased my strength. but compared to people like Margie and Luke and Jennifer and Kisha who are in incredible shape, I don’t think we were as strong as them, but we were in good enough shape to keep up with them.”

Q: Are you back at work?

Victor: It’s back to the grind probably starting tomorrow.

Former Miami Dolphins cheerleaders Jaime Edmonson, 29, and Cara Rosenthal, 26, placed second in the race, the highest finish for a female team in any of the show’s 14 seasons.

Q: Second place is pretty amazing.

Jaime: We’re proud to be the highest finishing female team ever on “The Amazing Race.”

Q: Jaime, watching the episodes, did you feel you were a little hard on taxi drivers and other locals when you would yell at them to hurry?

Jaime: No, I don’t, because I am an extremely focused and intense person and I never lost sight that ultimately we are on a race. I have been to Asia five or six times and all over Europe and I never treated a taxi driver or a local trying to help me sight-see the way I did on the race, but I ultimately never lost focus. This is a race for $1 million, and there is a sense of urgency. And at the end of every single pit stop, when I went to pay my taxi and collect my belongings, I always apologized.”

Cara: I also wanted to say, as person who watched [the show] from my comfortable couch before leaving on this journey, I would watch former races and ask, “Why didn’t they do this? I would never have done that.” But the reality of this race is you are all cannons firing all the time. You are at full force at every given moment and it brings out of you your most aggressive and straightforward tone sometimes. So, for someone like Jaime who is typically already very straightforward, it is only going to be magnified and exaggerated with the stress of the race.

Jaime: I always acknowledged my behavior and in all my interviews I always said I get into a taxi and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde comes out. I can accept losing if I can compete. It’s really hard for me to accept losing if it is someone else’s hands, especially on that last leg when we spent 45 minutes getting gas and going to a surf shop instead of a surfboard fence. He essentially took it out of our hands, which is so much harder for me to accept.

The mother-son team of Margie Adams, 50, and Luke Adams, 22, were strong competitors throughout the 12 laps of the race and were leading for most of the finale until Luke, who is hearing impaired, got frustrated on the Road Block. The team finished third.

Q: Why did you decide to do the race?

Margie: I think the first reason was that Luke was the biggest fan of the show and really wanted to be on it. I think just for the adventure and the fun …

Luke (through his interpreter Janet): When I was growing up, a lot of hearing people oppressed me. They would say that just because you couldn’t hear you couldn’t do things. That really frustrated me. When I told people I wanted to go on “The Amazing Race,” they gave me this look like: “You? But you’re deaf. They will never take you.” So I actually applied four times to be on the show. People would say stop doing it, you are going to disappoint yourself. I said I am going to get picked on the show and I will make it to the final three and people would laugh at me because I am deaf. I had a talk with my mom and on the first show we were so focused on the challenge. I wanted to be successful on that first leg.

Q: Luke, what type of response have you had from the deaf community?

Luke: At first, when the show started to air, deaf people were so happy about it and then, as the show continued on, there were more and more deaf people who became excited. When we made it to the final three, the deaf community was thrilled.

Q: Would you talk about the whole conflict with Kisha and Jen, where both Jen and Luke were running for the box and Luke accidentally elbowed Jen and she called him a bitch for doing that?

Margie: It was very shocking and it was very unfortunate. As a mother with Luke growing up as a deaf child, he experienced so much people laughing at him. We have had people call him retarded. We have had people throw food on him. Luke’s dad was in the Army, so we moved around a lot and experienced it [at every location]. People don’t understand that.

I tried to stay out of that conflict with Jen and Kisha. And I did. I just interpreted what was going but at the end when there was laughing and giggling when Luke was trying to express himself, it just all came back to me — just how rude people can be. I know now that Jen and Kisha - it was a nervous laughter, a tense situation and they didn’t intend to be insulting.

Jen and Kisha and Luke and I have resolved the issue and I understand that was not their intent at all. But you are exhausted. We were hungry. The night before we had slept outside in a tent in the rain. And they don’t show everything leading up to it. There were a lot of things going on day. Everybody has accepted their responsibility ane their part in that and we have apologized. I have the ultimate respect for Jen and Kisha, as athletes, women and people.

–Susan King, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo credits: CBS]

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 3:04 pm by Susan King and is filed under Amazing Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.