Human rights to dancing tights Winnipeg landmarks provided a fast-paced venue for Amazing Race Canada's contestants By: Randall King  Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018 Last Modified: 12:59 PM CDT Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018 Updates

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Connecting 18 quotes to 18 human-rights luminaries at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Learning the Cygnet Dance from Swan Lake at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Delivering meals for Skip the Dishes.

Playing darts at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch #4 in St. James.

Learning how to do a simple magic trick… and make a passable balloon animal… at The Forks.

And topping it all off, finding the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Assiniboine Park, where host Jon Montgomery was waiting at the episode’s famous carpet, signifying the end of the Winnipeg leg.

Those were the challenges for the six remaining teams in the Winnipeg leg of The Amazing Race Canada: Heroes Edition, which broadcast Tuesday evening on CTV.

Coming out in first place at the Pit Stop in the Assiniboine Park sculpture garden were sibling Mounties Taylor and Courtney, their third win in the competition. Surprisingly, neither sibling had been to Winnipeg before.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Courtney told the Free Press immediately learning of their first-place win. The competition took place May 9, and a Winnipeg chill was in the air, for which they were were grateful.

“When we were running in Jakarta (two episodes earlier) and it was 30 C plus, it was terrible,” said Taylor. “I’d much rather run in this.”

Despite a lack of dance experience, they made it through the RWB competition easily, passing critical muster of artistic director André Lewis, in what might have been a replay of their voguing triumph in last week’s Toronto episode.

“It seems to be a common theme in this race,” said Taylor. “Me and my sister seem to be finding ourselves putting on costumes and dancing on stages. I think we’re just going to embrace it and we’re going to have new moves to show off when Courtney gets married in July.”

The two actually came ahead in the darts competition at the Royal Canadian Legion in St. James. “I hadn’t played darts in 15 years,” said Courtney. “It was cool.”

You didn’t see it in the broadcast, but the team of former Toronto Argos cheerleaders Leanne and Mar enjoyed an advantage in the Winnipeg race as Mar was actually a student at the RWB school for five years from the ages of eight to 13.

“It was an amazing experience to come back and relive that childhood dream of becoming a prima ballerina” – Mar, on her and partner Leanne’s success in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet challenge on the Amazing Race Canada

“I absolutely loved it,” she said shortly after arriving at the Pit Stop, where they learned their next stop would be Prince Edward Island. “I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ont., so it wasn’t too far of a jaunt for me.

“It was an amazing experience to come back and relive that childhood dream of becoming a prima ballerina.”

“We’ve had four different dance challenges so I’m really feeling in my element.”

That said, Mar did the race in some pain due to a leg strain. (In the episode, you can see she’s wearing a knee brace.)

“My ankle has been a little bit weak for the last couple of legs of this race, and I’ve been icing it and resting it, but during the ballet challenge where we’re on tip toes, I came down wrong on my ankle.”

Martina and Phil, sibling volunteers from British Columbia, came in second place, their best finish ever. Winnipeg was a good match for them, said Phil.

“I think we did well because we’re strategic,” said Phil. “We use our minds a lot.”

In the Detour Challenge, the two eschewed the RWB dance to instead deliver food for Skip the Dishes.

“A lot of times, it’s not just running right away,” said Phil. “Think it out, have a strategy, and then just execute it.”

“So what we did was memorize five names each and we took the elevator to the top floor and ran down the Human Rights Museum while the other teams were running back and forth” – Martina, on her and partner Phil’s success at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

“Even with the museum, we knew we had to find 18 quotes and match them up with the correct person,” said the effusive Martina, pumped from their second-place showing. “So what we did was memorize five names each and we took the elevator to the top floor and ran down the Human Rights Museum while the other teams were running back and forth.”

“We’re not very fast and we’re competing against teams like CFL (veterans), RCMP, professional cheerleaders, Olympians, and so what we decided to do was not run faster but run smarter.”

While the team of Nancy and Melissa came in last place in the Winnipeg competition, they were not eliminated and lived to compete in the next round, in Prince Edward Island. That episode broadcasts next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on CTV.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

Randall King
Reporter

In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.

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