FROM EDMONTON JOURNAL
http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=a2051433-c42d-4ed5-9661-de211b650f90Checking up on the doctors
Bickering couple says Amazing Race strengthened bondBy Ruth Myles, Postmedia News
Brett Burstein and his wife, Holly Agostino, know they are the team people love to hate on The Amazing Race Canada. And they're OK with that.
The pediatricians from Montreal were eliminated on this week's episode in Iqaluit, Nunavut. The couple was often portrayed as bickering and perhaps a bit devious, with Holly perpetually on the edge of losing it.
"I do not think it's morally wrong to hide maps," Brett says in a conference call, referring to moving maps in an airport store to keep them from other teams.
"I know we were operating within the rules to overcome some of our shortcomings...I do think the editing process was fair to me."As for Holly, she knows how she came across on the small screen: scattered, defeatist and willing to give up when the going got tough.
"It was hard to watch at times, definitely," Holly adds,
"but it wasn't special effects that I was breaking down."Their time on the show
"enhanced the strengths we had in our relationships," Brett says.
"I think it is kind of polarizing how it appears we are engaging +on television.(But) Hol and I know that I was nothing but proud of her all the time."What viewers didn't get to see, the pair says, was one of the reasons they went on the competition series: to give back to the Montreal Children's Hospital, where they both work.
They set up a website, amazing cause.com, to raise money for the hospital's charitable foundation, and pledged to donate 25 per cent of the prize if they won The Amazing Race Canada.
After narrowly missing elimination in Regina, however, the pair's journey ended in Nunavut, so they are out of the running for the $250,000, the Corvettes and a year's worth of travel on Air Canada.
They came in last on the leg after Holly took 90 minutes to hit a target with a harpoon on the frozen surface of Frobisher Bay.
"Trust me, I have played it out many ways in my head and there was no way we were getting out of Iqaluit," Holly says of the duo's decision to switch tasks during the Detour, abandoning the igloo they were building (badly) in favour of the harpoon challenge.
While they are closest to the two Tims (father and son duo Tim Hague Sr. and Jr.), the couple have stayed in touch with The Dudes, best friends Jet Black and Dave Schram. In fact, they watched this week's episode with the buff boys.
"I love Jet and Dave," Holly says as Brett reminds her (twice) that her husband is sitting right there. The pair tagged The Dudes as the ones to beat from the start of the race.
That "frat-boy" demeanour? Just a ploy to mask the fact that Jet and Dave are a "very strategic, very smart" team, the doctors say.
Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod, a.k.a. Team Body Break, were other strong contenders, they say.
So it was
"absolutely shocking" to the doctors that they overtook that particular team in a physically demanding challenge to stay in the race two episodes back, Brett says.
That said, Holly says people aspiring to make it on The Amazing Race could do worse than reaching out to one of Canada's fitness icons.
"You might want to hire Hal Johnson as your personal trainer as your first step."