The Real Deal With TAR's Pete and SarahOK, so now that I’m back from China (see how I worked my fabulous trip in there?) I’m talking to the Amazing Race 10 couples again. Usually it’s one of the highlights of my week because I love getting the real deal on the on and off-camera drama. But this week I was not looking forward to interviewing the booted team. Why? Because Peter got on my last nerve. The way the show was edited he seemed perfectly content to let Sarah—hi, the woman with the prosthetic leg—do all the hard work. Yes, Sarah’s a buff, Iron Woman triathlete, fully capable of doing all things. But still, when she struggled through the rock-climbing task in Vietnam while Peter seemingly sat on the boat chillin’, I lost respect for him. And the only question that came to my mind was “How much does Peter weigh, Sarah? ‘Cause you carried that man though this race!” Because I have a little tact, I didn’t ask that question. But here’s what I did ask.
TV Guide.com:Whose idea was it for you two to do the race together?
Sarah: It was my idea. We were in Hawaii in September of ’05. We had flown over to train together for a week for the Hawaii Ironman. And I was just talking about The Amazing Race and I thought he’d be just the perfect partner.
TV Guide.com: Peter were you game right away?
Peter: Oh, absolutely.
TV Guide.com: Okay. Why didn’t you do some of the harder challenges? Sarah climbed The Great Wall. Sarah did the rock climbing and the ladder on the tower.
Peter: Well, each team player can only do six or seven challenges…and so what we would do is we would read the clue and then Sarah would decide if she wanted to do that task. Sarah doesn’t have a strong stomach. [So in Beijing] I had to eat the fish eyes. Balance on the bike is a huge issue for Sarah so when the clue said “Who’s ready to pedal?”….
Sarah: Now, mind you, there’s only a one-sentence clue. And it doesn’t really indicate what is involved. So, for example, the one in Vietnam where I climbed the wall says, “Who has strong arms and legs?” And I’m thinking it’s going to be a swimming challenge so I say “I do.”. Well, it’s not until you get on the boat and they take you out to this mysterious location that you realize it’s a big climb.
TV Guide.com: Still, in Vietnam, the clue said legs, plural, and because Peter’s a taller man, I thought he’d be like, “Okay, how about I take this one?”
Peter: Our whole thought process was ‘We are going to win this thing!” and that we were going to be there at the end. So we had to be a little smarter on letting Sarah take some at the beginning because if I would have done the first five challenges, Sarah had to do all the rest. What if we came across something that she absolutely couldn’t do? We were done. So we realized that these climbing tasks were going to be difficult for her but we knew she could complete them.
TV Guide.com: Ah, so you were looking at the end game?
Peter: We were looking long term. We really believed we were going to win and that if we didn’t win it would be because of what happened: We got bad directions.
Sarah: Yeah, some of the game comes down to luck. If you get a bad taxi driver, bad directions, or a car breaks down. There are things that are out of control no matter how strong your game is.
TV Guide.com: On a scale of 1 to 10 how surprised were you when you finished last?
Peter: Ten. I was shocked.
TV Guide.com: I’m surprised you were shocked because you verbally gave up several times.
Peter: I never quit. We won two. We finished first in the Forbidden City, we finished second and third. That’s not giving up. That’s firing yourself up and motivating yourself as a top athlete, as a top competitor.
TV Guide.com: So when you were saying “I don’t want to do this anymore,” you meant, “I wanna do this again and again.”
Peter: And I want to hurt myself more and more. As I’m saying, “I’m giving up,” I’m rowing harder and harder. I rowed past the Cho brothers, past James and Tyler, and we finish second. So, I challenge anyone to look at the results. Did we ever give up? We ran through the race. We were the leaders. We didn’t walk. We didn’t align with anybody. We didn’t need anybody.
TV Guide.com: Well you did try to align with The Beauty Queens.
Peter: Only once to work on getting a phone. And you know what, we probably would have aligned with The Barbies for one reason: They’re the smartest, most competitive team out there—besides us.
TV Guide.com: Really?
Peter: Absolutely. They’re aggressive. They’re sneaky and they were there to win.
TV Guide.com: Who do you think was the luckiest?
Peter: Kentucky. By far.
TV Guide.com: Who was your least favorite?
Sarah: There’s only one individual that I didn’t really enjoy and I liked her teammate. But the one I didn’t like was Karlyn.
TV Guide.com: Why?
Sarah: She had a chip on her shoulder. She was the kind of person where at the end of a long day, you’d hit the pit stop and you’d say, “Nice work” and she wouldn’t even acknowledge you. And then just watching her comments on the race and putting me down for playing the disabled card when she plays the race card. We play the cards that we are dealt. It’s a game.
TV Guide.com: Remind me of when she played the race card because I don’t remember it.
Sarah: Things happen on that race that we see that may not make the air so I’m just going to be vague on that.
Peter: One thing that shows Karlyn’s true character is when Dustin stepped into the boat and cut her leg and ended up needing eight stitches because she was bleeding everywhere, Karlyn said, “Good, she deserves to bleed.” You don’t ever want to see anyone get hurt. I mean that was something permanent that Dustin has been scarred with. But Karlyn was notorious for being malicious. And I don’t think she’s a role model for her own kid.
TV Guide.com: From what I saw on the show, it looked like the Beauty Queens had stolen Karlyn’s boat—literally hopped in front of them—and that’s why she said that. She was mad.
Peter:There’s a situation in Kuwait where Karlyn kept shoving Dustin away from the gentleman trying to get directions. It’s the same thing. She bumped her. They bumped them. But nobody was physically harmed. There’s a huge difference when somebody’s physically hurt and you laugh about it. That’s wrong.
TV Guide.com: Point taken. What are some examples of things you wished CBS had shown you doing but didn’t?
Peter: I wished they would have showed me standing and cheering for Sarah when she’s climbing up the cliff instead of sitting back drinking a coke on the boat because I was out there a long time cheering for everybody. I love CBS butI laid down in the shade right next to everybody else. Everybody’s sitting on their boats cheering, but they show me!
TV Guide.com: What about you Sarah? Were there things you’d wish had not shown?
Sarah: Umm… I don’t feel like there’s anything that I wish they hadn’t shown because I guess I presumed everything’s fair game. One of the things that comes to mind for me that sometimes I’d wish they had shown how hard it is. When we were in Vietnam we had to sleep on the hard tile ground with cockroaches. We spent the night in an airport in India and had to sleep on the ground too and it’s those sorts of things that make you tired and worn down. It doesn’t make interesting television, so I don’t think that’s why it made air…
TV Guide.com: Maybe you should have screamed when one crawled on you. How big were they?
Sarah:They were definitely bigger than the ones in my Brooklyn apartment.
TV Guide.com: Slightly off-topic, how long had you been dating before the show started?
Sarah: Peter and I have sort of had an on-again off-again thing for a while, but we used to work at the same company up until about January. And at the time I was in the process of breaking up with a man that had been living with me. And Peter was getting out of a relationship as well, so we had picked up shortly thereafter.
Peter: And then we went on the race. So, a very short time.
TV Guide.com: Peter, how did you feel when Sarah told Phil you’re not nurturing or caring?
Peter: I will never be nurturing or caring when I’m trying to win a million dollars. It’s just not going to happen. Sarah had every right to say that at the time because I wasn’t there cuddling or holding hands. It was a race. I’m competitive.
TV Guide.com: After you saw the show were any apologies given?
Peter: Well I would say the one apology that I have… is that I didn’t communicate better. But at the time I was going through a recently-broken relationship. My mind shut down.
TV Guide.com: Wait, if you were coming out of a break-up. Were you all really together or was that just a ploy to get on the show?
Peter: She had broken up in January and I had broken up since March, but what happens when you’re tired and your mind’s broken down? You dwell on the past. You dwell on mistakes that you’ve made and so sometimes I would end up blaming Sarah for problems I had in my previous relationship. And I think I failed at that part.
TV Guide.com: At times watching you two was sort of like watching the evolution of a break-up. At what point did you say, “We might need to spend some time apart?”
Sarah: I think for me, the point where I was kind of like, “Huh, I don’t really know if I like Peter’s behavior towards me” was in Mongolia.
TV Guide.com: That was pretty early on.
Sarah: It was. But there wasn’t one moment where things just fell apart. Mongolia kinda felt like, “eh.” And then you go to another city and you kind of go, “eh”. It just sort of builds. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. The Race is the hardest thing we’ve ever done. And we’re Ironman athletes.
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