‘The Amazing Race’s’ Greg and John on their comeback win: We felt ‘dead in the water’
It’s not about how you start but how you finish. With four leg wins, Greg and John Franklin were the favorites heading into Wednesday’s “The Amazing Race 35” finale in Seattle, but the brothers struggled on their first two tasks of the Scramble — let’s just say glassblowing and roadie work are not their forte. They were in third place at one point, but thanks to some good directions and John’s “crazy memory” at the final memory challenge, they passed Rob and Corey, and Joel and Garrett to claim the $1 million prize.
“That was probably one of the worst legs that Johnny and I have had in terms of the mistakes that we made,” Greg tells Gold Derby (watch above). “So watching it back was a little cringey because you’re like, ‘Oh, my goodness, the amp is right there! C’mon, people! Figure it out here.’ But it also felt so good to pull it out at the end.”
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One of the goals of the Scramble, which allows teams to complete three tasks in any order of their choosing, is for teams to not have any indication of where they or other teams are in the leg. But all three teams wound up at one task, Grunge, at the same time. Greg and John hilariously missed — multiple times — that the piece they needed was under the cover of one of their amps. They also accidentally made Rob and Corey realize that they needed to plug in their amps. “It was the first time I felt dead in the water,” Greg says. “We searched everywhere. There was one point where we were like, ‘Well, what do we do?'”
“Glassblowing was like, again, again, again. This one was like, I’m stuck!” John adds.
Once they made it out, the duo hoped that the final Scramble task would be something physical that was right up their alley. And it was. They breezed through the trapeze task and then arrived second to the final challenge, which they rolled through on their first attempt.
“I absolutely do not have a photographic memory,” John says. “If anything, my auditory memory is pretty good. I think just studying up, taking notes like any good racer should do is really what helped us in the challenge there. We really thought this was going to be iterative. We were ready to get it wrong a few times, but you could see it in our faces — we were jumping for joy — when he said, ‘You’re good,’ on the first try.”
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