by Gina Scarpa

 

This week, on The Amazing Race, the teams traveled from Chile to Argentina. There, they played poker against a gnome, lassoed a bale of hay, searched for bags of money hidden in the dirt, played polo on wooden horses, and hurried to the mat to meet host Phil Keoghan to avoid elimination. Along this leg of the race, attorneys and moms Monique Pryor and Shawne Morgan ran into some bad luck and couldn't make up the time lost during their tasks. They arrived last at the checkpoint and were told they were out of the race. Today, Monique and Shawne spoke to RealityWanted in an exclusive interview about their experiences on the race.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: How did the two of you end up becoming a part of The Amazing Race this season?
A. Monique: Eight years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I watched the first season and immediately thought of Shawne. We've traveled together to Kenya, to Brazil, and we wanted to see the world. We needed to be patient and grow our families and last year, it was finally time to apply. We put together a video of our kids running around and then we cut to a scene of us in these fabulous ball gowns. We wanted to show them that moms can be fabulous even after having kids. When we got the call to be on the show, we were too excited.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What was going through your mind at the starting line?
A. Shawne: We were like, "It's on!" It felt so surreal. We were like, "We're about to do this!" It was such a big accomplishment to be there. We took the New York bar exam and then the Jersey bar exam right after and we both passed. That was a big accomplishment and this was another one for us.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: When I spoke to Dana and Adrian, they admitted that they didn't like you at first because you hid the Chile guidebook on them in the airport (which is in the deleted scenes on CBS.com). What happened?
A. Monique: As Shawne will tell you, it was my idea. We're attorneys and we know people can be unassuming. This is a race and we have to get an advantage over the other teams. The book didn't even have much information in it but it was nervewracking for the other teams that they couldn't find it. My coworkers gave me high fives for that. The funny this is that people did things to us but we didn't take it personally. We liked everybody.
A. Shawne: We made great alliances but at the end of the day, it's a race!

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Which teams stood out to you as a threat or people to watch out for?
A. Shawne: Everybody! Fromm the grandma and granddaughter (Jody and Shannon) because Jody was a triathlete to everyone. We looked around and we thought that this could be anybody's race. Everyone was fair game.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You had some bad luck in this last leg of the race. How difficult was that lasso challenge? It seemed like it was made for Jet and Cord!
A. Shawne: Yeah, who could do this besides the cowboys?
A. Monique: My 8 year old turned to me when we watched the episode and said, "That's not fair!"
A. Shawne: Honestly, I don't know how long we were out there. I was not looking at anyone else. All I hear was Monique. I said, "Just pray!" and that's what did it. Praying helped. It happened just that way.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: So far in the race, a lot of teams have made mistakes but you were running a pretty clean race. Did it frustrate you that you were being passed by other teams and they were making mistakes?
A. Monique: It was definitely frustrating. People would follow us places. Dana and Adrian followed us to the first task, to the ropes challenge. In our pack, we led a lot of the time. I'm good driving with a stick shift and Shawne is good with directions. We led the cops to the lasso challenge. They're our buddies. We led Dan and Jordan, the brothers, there. They're like our sons. To see them finish so quickly and move on was frustrating.

 

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: I was glad that the two of you stuck it out the entire leg and finished on the mat, to see what Phil would say.
A. Shawne: I'm glad you pointed that out. We were moving and we felt good about the race we ran. It was a bummer. I was look at Phil's face like, "No, no, no..." I was in denial and it was a shocking moment. We did such a great job. The comments and the feedback we've received from people has been awesome.
A. Monique: We wanted to show our children that you never give up and we wanted to inspire women and other moms to get out there and try things.

 

 

The Amazing Race airs Sundays at 8/7c on CBS.

 

(Image courtesy of CBS)

 

Follow Gina at twitter.com/ginascarpa

 

For more Amazing Race links, visit SirLinksALot.net