On Amazing Race, do the teams know in advance what the penalty will be for giving up on a task?
On both Amazing Race and Amazing Race Canada, I've seen teams given time penalties for not finishing a roadblock. Do the teams know what those penalties are or is it a surprise to them when they take the penalty?
Some examples from this season of Amazing Race Canada: Rex and Bob took two penalties in a single episode: one of 2 hours and one of 4. Another team got a two hour penalty for abandoning a different task in a different episode. Were the times task-specific, or is your first penalty always 2 hours and your second always 4?
In the most recent episode, a second place team arrived at a roadblock and saw the first place team (who got there not much earlier) do it in 90 minutes. The second place team needed 8 hours to complete it, during which all the other teams came, did it in about 3 hours, and left. The second place team ended up being eliminated.
In their place, once I had struggled for say 5 hours and seen that most people took 3, and when I knew there were still 2 or 3 teams who hadn't started, I would take a 2 hour penalty. Likely I would still finish ahead of those who hadn't started yet. But this team didn't do that or even discuss it on air. Is that because it might have been a 4 or 6 hour penalty, or they didn't know how long the penalty was?
I expect the rules and producer behaviour are the same for all the Amazing Race variants, so a Canada-specific answer is probably not necessary.
Best Answer
They do.
One example of this is found in Season 7 in the Amazing Race (US), where Rob Mariano was doing a mystery meat eating challenge. He quit the challenge part way through, specifically mentioning that he knew he and Amber would get a 4 hour penalty, but he was banking on others to quit as well (thus guaranteeing that there would be others penalized beyond them). Because he knew the penalty in advance, he was able to subvert it to his team's advantage.
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