i almost forgot, shirley "surely" for some reason forgot about the camara / sound men
I'm trying to recall some of the decoys we've heard in the past? anyone want to help me out here please do.
Wasn't there a TAR5 decoy too?
TAR7 Alex & Lynn spotted running through NY, later they confirmed.
TAR7 Meredith & Gretchen run through the Dalla's airport, drop a yellow clue hoping that someone would notice them but it never happened.
TA7 Finale : Florida
TAR8 Bickering Godlewski's en-route to Canada
TAR8,LOTS of decoy teams, maybe not even teams running around Niagra Falls.
BVM
article Going Local With the popularity of Race, it's now necessary to have security, decoys and cover stories to fool the curious, particularly in places American tourists frequent. "We have the Pied Piper motif going on a little bit," allows van Munster. "We'll call the show something else-they think we're filming a commercial," adds co-producer Elise Doganieri, van Munster's wife. "We'll be setting up a club box and Americans will ask, 'Is this The Amazing Race?' And we'll say, 'No, we're doing a documentary.'"
Wiki* Eliminated teams are often sent to "sequesterville", a foreign location on the race where they get to relax and do some sightseeing until the race is over. Teams eliminated near the end of the race are generally flown directly to the final city, and asked to perform "decoy" legs in the same or a different US city in order to mask who the final 3 teams are and what the final city is.
*Due to the rather obvious nature of the crossing of the finish line, in later seasons several "decoy runs" have been done where teams from the final four are filmed crossing individual finish lines, to deter people from learning the identity of the winning team.