The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race Discussion
Ranking the Teams -- A basis for comparing all teams (TAR 1 - 33)
Coutzy:
I'd like to know the basis for Season 5's field being considered so strong.
Yes, Colin and Christie finished in the top 2 a then-record number of times in a row. But who else did that season have?
Marshall and Lance, who's placements were all over the place until they quit (Note that they may have performed much better had the injury not occured, but we can only speculate)
Charla and Mirna, who argued and fought their way across 4 continents before coming to their end in Africa. They never really wowed me with any of their legs.
Kami and Karli- Enough said :res:
Linda and Karen- Another team that never really wowed me. They finished either mid-table or towards the back in every leg bar 3. (In fact, apart from these legs, their best finish was 6th in a leg of 9.) They weren't that great, and probably wouldn't be so memorable without Karen's amazing effort on THAT Roadblock.
Brandon and Nicole- They wound up with a handful of good results, and were in the middle so much that I didn't really know they existed until the Fast Forward drama.
Chip and Kim- Perhaps, with Brandon and Nicole, one of the only decent teams in the season.
It should also be noted that Colin performed 8 Roadblocks to Christie's 1.
Basically I'd like to know why Colin and Christy are considered to be so great, but Nick and Starr and Megan and Cheyne are not. Meghan and Cheyne managed to defeat the juggernauts that were Flight Time & Big Easy. And Nick and Starr managed to put together a record string of wins, against Ken and Tina and Toni and Dallas, teams that could have easily won any other season.
DavidJunior:
I agree with Coutzy. Colin and Christie are good, but the S5 cast, although memorable in many ways, were weak racers
and in my opinion, the fact that horribly incompotent teams like
Kami and Karli
Charla and Mirna
Chip and Kim (you have to admit that they are probably the worst winners in terms of overall performance)
really testifies to how weak this season was
not to mention the fact that the guys literally dragged their team to the finals, with each female of the F3 teams only performing 1 roadblock.
Had the equal Roadblock rule been in place, I think this would've been a totally different season.
Nick and Starr had to defeat 4 if not 5 very competitive, compotent (for the most part) F6 teams to win their season
Meghan and Cheyne faced down 3 powerhouse M/M teams, and another team with some of the best luck on the race to get the $1 million
Heck, if it weren't for that Passport debacle, it probably would've been 4/5 M/M teams with M/C
Pedaler:
Thanks for all your work on this, theschnauzers. It's fun looking at these types of objective analyses. I don't have any major objections about the rankings. There are always outliers in any set of data but that is to be expected.
When I think of the top racers of all time, I have a hard time including the racers of the last few seaons with the best of the early seasons. They may be as good as the earlier ones but the Amazing Race has cetainly changed. The shorter and reduced budget races are to me much easier than those in the earlier seasons. It's kind of like comparing current Quarterback passing statistics in the NFL to those of a generation before. Football, like the Amazing Race, has changed.
Anyway, I did enjoy reviewing your list. Any analysis that shows that Dan and Andrew were by far the worst final 3 team in history is OK with me. They couldn't even beat out Aaron and Ariane. :lol3:
mswood:
The thing with these is one we need to all (myself included) remember that the requirements for being a strong team are different each season.
Things like remembering when judging seasons 1-4 that teams with great placement averages had to deal with the possibility of another team getting in first not to superior racing but due to their being a fast forward available in all but the final leg. One could certainly argue that that really handicaps teams from season 1-4. Then you have the fact that seasons 1-5 allowed one racer to do (though not all teams did some very much split their tasks and responsibilities during the race) which makes it difficult to compare seasons 6-16 to earlier races. Then you have seasons 13 and up that for the most part have removed what was one of the biggest factors of the race and that is the ability to drive and navigate long distance through various countries. Then you have things like the Yield or U-Turn where you can deliberately impede the progress of your fellow racers (something seasons 1-4 didn't have). Then you have your competitors, and let me say that no season has across the board strong racers, each has usually have 4 - 5 teams that simple suck. And I think its actually gotten worse. Look at seasons 13-15. Those seasons have the most penalties, teams that get eliminated through their own carelessness, and choices that just boggle the mind.
David Junior on some of your points.
If season 5 had to require the women to do half the tasks, I think it would have ended close to the same. Christie seemed the most driven of the women (in couples), their were no strong male teams at all (so no worries about that), in fact I think it a lot about that seasons that teams like Kami & Karli (who over all just sucked as racers), Charla & Mirna (who managed some flights well, but also had huge problems), and Linda and Karen (who had drive god bless them, but my god they weren't good racers) lasted so late in the race.
Nick & Starr didn't face strong competition from many teams. This was a season that is often considered the idiots seasons. Toni & Dallas (I loved them) killed themselves, Ken & Tina (a good team), Terence & Sarah (Sorry but they weren't that good, probably due to their inability to work well together), Then you had the idiot Frats (one of the most incompetent teams the race has ever had).
Then you had Meghan & Cheyne and lets face it, we have a season were three teams literally take themselves out of the race (Mika & Canaan, Zev & Justin, The Globetrotters), another team taken out due to the inability to perform either RB (and one of them shouldn't have been that hard), a father/son team that was never that competitive. That leaves you with Sam & Dan (who were good, but erratic and their ability to work together under pressure was a huge flaw), and Brian & Ericka who truly only made it due to two other teams self destructing (similar to what happen in getting the Frats in the final three of season 13).
Caelestor:
I say it's impossible to determine the strongest teams, due to the wild fluctuations in the casts each season.
Furthermore, we have to take into account things like:
Roadblock rule
Taxi Drivers
Airplane Flights
Bunching/HOO
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