Courtesy of: TV GUIDE, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Amazing Race Cheerleaders Are D! O! N! E! by Rochell D. Thomas
Kellie and Jamie, The Amazing Race 10
Kellie and Jamie had hoped to be the first female team to win The Amazing Race. They wanted to joke with Phil [Keoghan], see Madagascar or Vietnam, and maybe spend some of the cash they slyly made off their looks during the first leg (more on that later). But, as is always the case in a globe-trotting contest, you don't always get what you want. And, after they made a wrong turn during the second leg's detour, the cheerleaders from South Carolina became the third team eliminated from The Amazing Race 10.
TV Guide.com: How many vaccination shots did you have to get before you started the race?
Kellie: Oh gosh, it was a lot.
Jamie: Seven or eight.
TVGuide.com: What was the weirdest?
Kellie: We had to get a Japanese encephalitis shot, and it was really funny because the nurses were so confused. They were like, "Are you going to be around pigs, or in China?" We said, "We don't know," and they said, "Why are you getting this then?" and we're like, "Our family planned a surprise vacation?"
TV Guide.com: Well, you did make it to Mongolia.
Both: Well, we tried.
TVGuide.com: What does Mongolia smell like?
Kellie: All we remember is the smell of camel poo. But Mongolia is absolutely beautiful. The mountains were pretty.
TVGuide.com: Random question: Were Tom and Terry always so "Just Jack!" enthusiastic?
Both: They're really like that.
Jamie: But we love those guys.
Kellie: And when we got on the train that took us to Mongolia, we shared a little cabin and we had an absolute ball.
Jamie: We were on the bus with them. So we got to hang out with them for eleven hours straight.
TVGuide.com: Speaking of the bus, I read on the CBS website that it was a 963-mile ride. What does one do on a bus for 963 miles?
Both: Sleep.
Jamie: Well, we didn't know when we got on the bus if it was going to be an 11-hour ride or if it was going to be a 30-minute ride. So you sleep for a little bit and then you wake up and you grab your backpack thinking, "OK. They're slowing down. Are we getting off?" So we were kind of on edge. But we got to know all the teams better because that was one of the first times we had nothing to do.
TVGuide.com: How did you know how much food to bring? Or did they provide food during a rest stop?
Both: No!
Kellie: Well, Jamie and I brought protein bars with us on the race because we didnąt want to spend money on food.
Jamie: We probably brought 30 each. We were fortunate that we brought those because some of the teams on the bus didn't have anything and literally didn't eat the whole time.
TVGuide.com: Did you give them to Tom and Terry?
Jamie: We tried.
Kellie: We wanted to give them our leftover money and protein bars, but we weren't allowed to see the teams once we were eliminated.
TVGuide.com: So how much money did you have left?
Jamie: We actually had a lot — like $140 — because we were one of the few teams that collected money along the way.
TVGuide.com: What do you mean, you "collected money"?
Kellie: When we were on the shuttle to go to the airport, there was a really nice family, and they knew we were obviously on some kind of show but they didn't know which one and they were like, "Do you guys need money?" and they gave us $70. Then when we were on the flight to Beijing there was a man that exchanged American money for Chinese money with us and he gave us a really good rate.
Jamie: So we made money off that exchange.
TVGuide.com: Were you two working the puppies, showing boobage? I'm trying to understand this random act of generosity.
Both: [Laughs] No, we were not.
Jamie: We were looking rough, actually. Maybe we just looked so desperate that they just gave us [money].
TVGuide.com: Did any other teams get help along the way?
Jamie: They might have. We don't know.
Kellie: A lot of times, if they get money they won't tell you because they don't want you to know they have a one-up on you.
TVGuide.com: Speaking of one-ups, when I talked to Vipul and Arti, they said that you were one of the fastest teams up the Great Wall.
Kellie: We were. It was kind of funny because a lot of the guys were trying to use upper-body strength. And there's no way you can get up that wall with upper-body strength. So we used our legs.
Jamie: It was really cool because when we got to the wall we saw that there were five teams and we panicked because we were behind. But we didn't stop. We just motivated each other, used our cheerleading skills and flew up that wall.
Kellie: Jamie and I rock-climb sometimes for fun, and that really helped us, too.
TVGuide.com: What did you do after you were eliminated?
Jamie: We actually had to stay a day or two in Mongolia. And that gave us a lot of time to just sit and dwell on the woulda-coulda-shouldas.
Kellie: And pout.
Jamie: We were extremely upset when we got eliminated. We put our heart into this 110 percent.… I mean, everything we had. And we didn't expect to get out that early.
Kellie: You never can expect that. We ran into some bad luck, but we're still thankful for the experience. Best experience ever.
TVGuide.com: About that bad luck. So, before you made that U-turn and passed the single-mother team, you were going in the wrong direction?
Kellie: The thing is, we stopped to make sure we were going the right way, and this lady pointed us in the opposite direction. We were like, "That's weird." So we stopped again just to double-check, and a different person pointed in the same direction. We asked a third person, and they said the same thing. So when we saw the moms pass us, we were like, "Oh, they don't know it's this way!" We drove for a while before figuring that we were totally in the wrong direction. By the time we got there, Lyn and Karlyn had already finished the bow and arrow.
Jamie: They were running out while we were running in. So we knew at that point that we were last, and that was the tough part.
Kellie: That was really hard. And then I took on that roadblock, and I had never shot a bow and arrow in my life.
TVGuide.com: So you shot them even though you knew you were eliminated?
Jamie: She shot 117 bows and arrows. She's a trooper.
Kellie: I was out there for three or four hours. Jamie and I always said, "No matter what, we're never going to give up." So I tried. It was so hard. My hands were bleeding.
Jamie: They just kept bringing bushels and bushels of arrows.
Kellie: I was like, "Are these arrows ever going to run out?" But as long as they were bringing them I was going to be shooting them. I'm surprised I didn't catch myself on fire, I shot so many.
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I can see that getting old very quickly.
