The presence of sibling/lawyers Tammy & Victor in the final three of "The Amazing Race 14" should not be any sort of surprise. Aside from one awful leg in Romania, the siblings have performed consistently as one of the top racing teams on the program.
In fact, that Romanian leg may have helped Tammy & Victor in retrospective by forcing Victor to be more inclusive towards Tammy over the course of the remaining race. Though they met adversities since Romania, they stayed unified enough and in good humor enough to not let anything threaten their eventual final run.
The concluding portion of leg ten featured Tammy & Victor at their best, taking advantage of their obvious home language advantage in China to take another race leg going away. While Victor was squeamish over the local Beijing cuisine, said squeamishness didn't get in the way of him completing the team Roadblock. I do grant that Tammy & Victor won't have a home language advantage for most of the finale.
My only criticism of Tammy & Victor's performance last episode is that I believe they U-turned the wrong team. Though it wasn't necessarily wrong to use the U-Turn, it was Margie & Luke (not Kisha & Jen) who had more consistently challenged them on previous legs and had seemed the greater threat. If forced to do a Detour based on vocal recognition of all things, Margie & Luke could have been delayed to the point of elimination.
Tammy and Victor are plainly not the most mechanically or physically inclined but otherwise they are the most skilled, virtually never getting lost on their own and virtually always making the first departures out of crowded airports. Though it has been deemphasized in more recent legs, Tammy & Victor still have a willingness to use subtle subterfuge if necessary to prevail one more time.
If form holds, one of the final challenges this TAR14 will be retrospective based on the memories and experiences garnered during the course of the race. Should that be case, the arguably smartest team in the field, Tammy & Victor may be best equipped to bring home the final victory. At the least, they should be favored for it.
_________________________Labels: tammy and victor, tar 14.11, tar14 teams, the amazing race, the amazing race 14
