I think it's just wishful thinking, Luke. Like some people think the "Lasso a Steer" was put in so the cowboys would have success. Or the "Counting Chips" was supposed to help Maria and Tiffany last season.
Maybe instead of Chinese Calligraphy they should have had an ASL challenge in your season?
We all pull for our favorite teams, and want to complain when it looks like someone gets special treatment, even when we know they don't.
(By the way, I always thought they should have let you have the opportunity to hang glide, even though the winds weren't too cooperative that day.)
For an ASL challenge, I actually told racers about gorilla's primary language is Sign Language then they all freaked out and thought there might be an ASL challenge related with gorilla telling clue in sign language (when we got a picture of gorilla statue in Phuket). It was hilarious to see them scrambling and try to learn few signs while we were traveling from India to Thailand. But yeah I was hoping there might be an ASL challenge or something like that while we were in Europe. There's a lots of famous deaf school and deaf history in Europe. Oh well.
For paraglide, I wish that I volunteered for roadblock immediately instead of reading whole clue then I would've been forced to run down the hill immediately then I would have been able to catch up with Tammy down the trail instead of having my mom hang around and wait for wind to die down (we were on the mountains for nearly two hours before we decided that Mom should run down the mountains). But, I can't fly down anyway, I have to be able to hear the instructor's cues.
Mike (White) and I actually had a talk about non-elimination legs. Originally, we thought producers do throw non-elimination legs in to save their favorite teams for most of times so we thought the producers probably would save Mike & his dad or me and my mom if one of us comes in the last place at one point since we both were producers' favorite teams. We actually wanted to test it to see if they actually do that but we didn't want to come in the last place on purpose. I remember sitting in the ambulance in Phuket while mom's recovering, the pit stop was only like 20 feet away from us so when I see that Mike & Mel came in the last place. I was pretty sure it was non-elimination leg to save them. Then few minutes later, Mike came over and gave me a hug and said good bye. I was completely surprised then realized producers doesn't do that to save their favorite teams, non-elimination legs were actually planned way before the race started.
Some favorite teams doesn't get saved. Some favorite teams get saved. All it matters is to be in right time and right place. Pure Luck.