Singing Princeton U. grads knocked out of 'Amazing Race
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Joyce Persico, Trenton Times
An a capella singing duo who graduated from Princeton University earlier this year fell from first place to last and were eliminated from television's "The Amazing Race" Sunday night.
Ironically, Connor Diemand-Yauman and Jonathan Schwartz were scratched from the $1 million global race on an episode filmed at the beginning of summer, on the day they were supposed to attend their graduation ceremony.
The friends were handicapped early in the fourth episode when they failed to book a flight from Ghana to Sweden that would have gotten them to their destination two hours sooner than some of their competitors.
Eventually were bested by a task called "sleds" in which they had to kneel on an extreme sports machine as it careened down a snowbound, winding mountain track in the Arctic.
They switched to a tent-building "beds" task when they failed, after a number of sledding tries, to get down the mountain under the required one minute, fifty-eight second time limit.
They successfully completed the "beds" task but not soon enough to beat eight other teams that came in ahead of them.
"We were supposed to graduate today, so it was like graduating from Princeton and from "The Amazing Race' on the same day,'' Diemand-Yauman said as Schwartz helped finish the sentence after hearing host Phil Keoghan intone the dreaded, "I'm sorry to tell you you've been eliminated from the race."
"This is one of the most incredible experiences of our lives and I can't think of anyone better to share it with,'' said Diemand-Yauman, who began the episode wearing a black and orange "Princeton University Class of 2010" tee.
Former members of the university's Nassoons a capella singing group, the pair were identified as the "Green" team" and members of an "Ivy League" singing group on the pretaped show that airs on Sundays at 8 p.m.
At Princeton, Diemand-Yauman was a psychology major from Chesterland, Ohio, who served as class president during his freshman, sophomore and junior years.
He ended his college years as undergraduate student body president and was awarded Princeton's prestigious Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the highest general honor the university confers on an undergraduate.
Schwartz, a sociology major from Cranford, N.J., has appeared in an Off-Broadway revival of "The Fantasticks."
The good-natured duo threw their caps into the air and sang, "Through many delays, roadblocks and legs, we are the last team to arrive and Phil will send us home. Goodbye!"
They leapt into the air as they made one of the most memorable and gracious exits in the history of the Emmy Award-laden reality show.
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