Picture This! Racers Confront Their Past In Image-Making Challenge as Season 10 of THE AMAZING RACE CANADA Concludes

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede CTV’s THE AMAZING RACE CANADA has crowned its new champion, putting an exclamation point on an epic milestone 10th season that covered seven provinces, 16 cities, and more than 16,000 kilometres (the entire season is currently available for catch-up on CTV.ca and the CTV app). The four-team Season 10 finale took place in Edmonton, with twin sisters Lauren and Nicole from Mississauga, Ont., wrestling BFFs Taylor and Katie from Calgary and Edmonton, friends Colin and Matt from Mount Pearl, Nfld., and baseball buds Michael and Tyson from Vancouver facing challenges that involved professional sports mascots, scaling tall bridges, changing tires on racing cars, aerial acrobatics, and much more. But it was the power of recall that cleared the path to victory. SPOILER ALERT: Details about what happened are going to be discussed. The lead changed hands a number of times over the last leg, but all four teams simultaneously found themselves at the Royal Alberta Museum, where they had to arrange a series of photos from various stages of the Race, in the proper timeline. It was an extremely difficult brainteaser, especially with physical and mental fatigue setting in, and so much at stake. Even deciphering the photos themselves was hard. All the teams were baffled by one of the pictures that simply appeared to be a green line! What the heck is that? The first team to figure it all out was Taylor and Katie. They scurried to the finish line at Commonwealth Stadium, but they honestly weren’t sure where they were in the rankings. It wasn’t until some of the previously eliminated racers started signaling “No. 1” with their hands that the realization struck Taylor and Katie: they had just won THE AMAZING RACE CANADA. Colin and Matt finished second, followed by Michael and Tyson in third place, and Lauren and Nicole in fourth place. Here’s what best friends and wrestlers Taylor McPherson and Katie Mulkay had to say: Q: What has it been like over the past few months keeping the secret that you won THE AMAZING RACE CANADA (Season 10)? TAYLOR: “It has been a nightmare, with constant torture and torment from our family members. They’re like, ‘so just tell us.’ And Katie has four sisters, so… ” KATIE: “They’ve been trying to hassle me. ‘Oh, let’s get a few drinks in her, and she’ll spill.’ And I’m like, ‘no, it’s not going to be that easy, you guys. You have to stay tuned.’ But it was fine, because ultimately nobody really wanted to know. Obviously, they were asking us, but they wanted to watch it play out, right? It was kind of like, ‘tell me, but don’t tell me.’ ” Q: How are you processing the entire experience? KATIE: “It’s hard to even have words to describe the journey. It’s so overwhelming. Thinking about everything now, you kind of go, ‘oh my God, we did that?’ We did every single leg, every single challenge.” TAYLOR: “We didn’t have any Express Passes. We didn’t have any Assists. And we actually didn’t have other teams in the race that really helped us with stuff, either. But I’d do this a million times over if I could. You know, we’re elite wrestlers, we’ve wrestled at a high level for a long time, but on our many wrestling trips we haven’t experienced Canada in the same way that we did on the race. This was a whole new level.” Q: That memory challenge with the pictures seemed almost impossible. How did you get through it? TAYLOR: “For some reason, on that last day, as stressful as it was, we had a really fun day. We weren’t as stressed as usual.” KATIE: “I think we kind of just embraced it. We screwed up a few times that day, but we said, ‘you know what? This is the last day that we’re ever going to be able to do this. So no matter what, even if we end up last on that mat today, let’s at least go out saying that we did our best, and with a smile.’ But we also definitely knew there might be a memory challenge like that at the end, from watching all the previous seasons.” TAYLOR: “We wrote notes every single night of the race. We wrote down exactly everything we did. We even wrote out all of our clues. It was major prep.” KATIE: “But I guess what we didn’t expect were the photos, obviously.” TAYLOR: “Those photos were not easy.” Q: Did you learn anything about each other that you didn’t know before? TAYLOR: “Right on that first leg, when (host) Jon Montgomery said ‘go,’ I didn’t realize that Katie was such a runner! She would just sprint on me. And I’m like, ‘buddy, my little legs can’t keep up.’ She’s the level-headed one. She’s cool, calm, and collected. I’m the excitable one. But she was not herself on that first leg. She was running ahead, not even looking for me. She wouldn’t even open up the clue and read it. She just started running. No destination, just run.” KATIE: “I seriously felt like a chicken with my head cut off on that first leg. It was just the way I was dealing with the stress. We gotta run, and we gotta run fast. But it’s weird, because when we got to the challenges throughout the race, I was usually level-headed, more focused, more ready to go. It’s almost as if, when I have what I need to know in front of me, I can take a break. But it was getting places in between the challenges that stressed me out.” Q: There could be a whole new career for Katie as a long-distance runner. TAYLOR: “Yeah, we had to go on THE AMAZING RACE CANADA to show Katie what her next sport is. It ain’t curling, I’ll tell you that!” KATIE: “Yeah, neither of us are curlers.” Q: You definitely struggled with the curling challenge. And you’re both from Alberta! It’s basically the curling capital of the world! TAYLOR: “Yeah, we got a lot of disappointed messages when that episode aired.” Q: Which of the other teams in the Race made the biggest impression on you? It doesn’t have to be performance-related, but which team had a lasting impact? TAYLOR: “I know who it is. It’s Julia and Olivia. We really created a strong bond with them. They had such energy, such determination. But they’re also such sweethearts. We love them, we’re staying connected with them. Honestly, it’s a lasting, life-long friendship, for sure.” KATIE: “And we can thank THE AMAZING RACE CANADA for that.” Q: Any thoughts about what you’re going to do with the $250,000 prize? TAYLOR: “I’d like to look for a house or invest in some property, but I also really want to invest in my future career, and possibly opening a nonprofit for Indigenous youth sport programming. So that could be a potential use.” KATIE: “For myself, I have no idea (laughing). I’ve been so stressed to finally see the finale, for some reason. I don’t know why. Taylor would bring it up all the time, and I’d say, ‘oh my God, I can’t even talk about it.’ It’s so much. It’s so big.” An encore presentation of THE AMAZING RACE CANADA Season 10 finale airs Saturday, Sept. 14 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV, CTV.ca, and the CTV app, and at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CTV2, with the full season available to stream on Crave beginning Friday, Sept. 13 billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv