Professional poker players Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho were eliminated during the latest episode of “Amazing Race” when the pair was unable to complete a challenging test of physical strength. The only all-female team on the show decided to quit after concluding that they would never finish the challenge.
In the leg’s Detour, teams were given the choice between two tasks, Farmer’s Game or Farmer’s Dance. Michelle and Ho failed to complete either mission, as the team couldn’t hit golf balls with a wooden mallet far enough in Farmer’s Game and ring a high striker in Farmer’s Dance. Rather than checking in at the Pit Stop, Michelle and Ho announced that they were quitting the race when met by host Phil Keoghan at the golf course.
Female poker pro “PeachyMer” is a regular viewer of the show and was critical of Michelle and Ho following their elimination. “Neither one of them were putting their weight into it right,” said PeachyMer, referring to the golf-like section of the Detour. “Maria was half-heartedly hitting it so Tiffany could have another go. Tiffany almost got it a few times and although I hadn’t cared for them, I was rooting for her to get it there. I know it’s different when you are freezing, exhausted, and annoyed in that situation, but it looks like if she had thrown a little more of her weight into it and swung around longer, they would have been golden. With that money at stake, let alone the drive to win, I would have been swinging it from the ground behind me with everything I had and hope my angle hit if nothing else.”
Michelle and Ho were the only team made up of two females and at times had trouble contending in physically demanding competitions. While the duo managed to stave off elimination for several weeks, the grueling nature of this episode’s challenge proved to be too much to overcome.
“It wasn’t a very fair Detour,” said TwoPlusTwo poster “True North.” “You were screwed without upper-body strength. You put any all-female team in the history of the show on that Detour and they don’t finish it at least three-quarters of the time. They should have had just the dancing and the fish for Farmer’s Dance; the bell was what made it unfair.”
Fellow TwoPlusTwo member “Jeff M” agreed: “It really looked like the designers of the course didn’t take into account the fact that one of the teams was composed of two 90 pound women. They could barely lift the sledge, much less hit the button with any real force. And the golf game wasn’t much better. They really had no shot at hitting the ball hard enough to make par.”
Others felt a lack of effort was the reason the two poker pros couldn’t keep pace with the other teams left in the race. “This was one of the most pathetic teams ever,” said online poker player and “Amazing Race” fan “medici.” “They quit twice. And they managed to sneak in once because a team lost its travel documents… How they managed to not even finish this week when the other couple couldn’t count the bells or read their clue and incur a 30 minute penalty is beyond pathetic.”
With the elimination of Michelle and Ho, the remaining five teams will travel to Sweden for the next leg of the 15th season of ” Amazing Race.”