The Amazing Race/Awesome

• The Season 7 finale, particularly the last 20 minutes or so, with Uchenna & Joyce making an unbelievable comeback by first getting a pilot to pull back to the gate to let them on the plane, then begging at the Finish Line to pay their cab driver. What followed was a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
• Zach essentially winning the race single-handedly while carrying Flo, often literally at times. But then your head explodes when you remember that Flo just won the race too.
  • The Amazing Race anthology My Ox is Broken! even listed Zach as the Best Racer Ever for exactly these reasons.
• Dustin & Kandice beating out the Fast Forward on leg 8 of Season 10, making them the only team to ever come from behind to win a leg in which a team won the Fast Forward (other teams have done it, but only because the team who won the Fast Forward was too far behind to win the leg... or else they sat around all day drinking tea). Made even better by the constant shots of the two teams who had taken the Fast Forward standing around, laughing about how miserable Dustin & Kandice must be doing an Intersection with one of the "weak" teams, turning the entire leg into one extended Description Cut.
  • Pulled off again in the third leg of the first season of TAR Latin America. Married couple Matias & Tamara (who had won the first two legs) were in the front of the pack and successfully took the Fast Forward. But in come unathletic mother and daughter Casilda & Casilda, who despite being one of the last teams to leave the Roadblock, relied on great navigational skills and won the leg, arriving less than 15 minutes before Matias & Tamara. Double awesome in that they took the faster Detour option, that involved quite a tall zipline, which the height-fearing mother Casilda got through without batting an eye and not a second of complaining or hesitation, making it the second time she got through a height related task (the first being a rappell on the first leg) like she did those things on a daily basis.
• Jet and Cord finishing in first place after they came in last on a non-elimination leg, even finishing the extra Speed Bump task in time to beat everyone else.
• Claire in season 17. After breaking a watermelon with her face, she keeps right on going with the task. Even better is that on her shot that hits the armor, the cameraman clearly wasn't expecting it to happen, and has to rush to get any footage of the armor falling over.
• Lena's Determinator unrolling of hay bales for eight hours, never giving up until Phil had to come out and tell her and Kristy they were eliminated. Ensuring their place as one of the best remembered early eliminated teams ever.
• Zabrina and Joe Jer from Season 1 of The Amazing Race Asia became the first all-female team to win any version of the race, something the original version didn't see until season 17.
• Nat and Kat, the first all-female winners of the US show, and after being firmly ahead during the entire final leg.
  • Considering Kat's statement "Tastes like a million dollars" on the same episode where Kat, a vegetarian, had to eat meat, and Nat had to face her fear of heights, this makes Nat and Kat's win all the more awesome and memorable.
• Kent and Vyxsin arrive at a U-Turn at the same time as Jaime and Cara, who pester them to give it to Flight Time and Big Easy. However, having learned their lesson from U-Turning a team that was ahead of them on their previous season, Kent and Vyxsin do it to the one team they know is behind them: Jaime and Cara! And then it gets better: it's a double U-Turn, so Jaime and Cara go ahead and give the other one to Flight Time and Big Easy, only to be passed by them anyway and finish in last place.
• In Season 1 of The Amazing Race Australia, Sam & Renae enter the penultimate leg at a huge disadvantage; not only are they the only females left on a race with brute strength rewarded over all, but they have also been "Marked for Elimination", which is nigh unbeatable without a Fast Forward as seen in every other version to use it. Not only that, but there were several equalisers on the leg as well, clumping every team together, robbing them of their previous time advantage. Any other team would have been pulverised - instead, they breeze through the final part of the leg at an unfathomable speed, they manage to check in first to the mat despite of another penalty they got for accidentally taking a private coach instead of a taxi, beat every other team on that leg in spite of that penalty, and become the only team in the entire Amazing Race series to beat the previously unbeatable "Marked for Elimination" penalty. And a female team at that!
• Despite the fact that Caite from season 16 was one of the most disliked contestants in that season, her handling Brandy's rage at the finish line could count as this. Their mutual dislike lasted all season, but this was the first and so far only time in any season that a racer would throw a hissy fit at the finish line instead of celebrating along with everybody else. Combine that with Brandy's generally horrible attitude, and the way Caite successfully shut Brandy up while remaining cool and collected was definitely a memorable end to that season.
  • Your Mileage May Vary, of course, since said mutual dislike was based purely on hearsay on Caite's part, combined with an egotistical desire to be the last woman standing regardless of common sense in employing the U-Turn. Add that to all the complaining, threatening to quit, and a horrible attitude to rival Brandy's, plus the fact that her way of "shutting Brandy up" amounted to gloating with a self-righteous sneer, and Brandy's verbal bitch-slap was more satisfying for those of us who think happy endings should be earned, not given.
• The end of Amazing Race 18. For the first time since season 11, the team who wins manages to do so without having finished in first in any prior legs. Even their fellow racers didn't see that coming.
• Bill and Cathi's epic recovery. While they finished fifth overall, give them a bit of credit - Typically, the race is biased against older contestants because while they have the teamwork, they lack the stamina or physical strength. Bill and Cathi finish in last on the very first leg of the race...but it was a non-elimination round. They then proceed to do very well in the race, being Overshadowed by Awesome by a couple team/ They finished fifth overall, but for a team that almost was the first team eliminated, that's one big recovery, especially given their age and the fact that Amazing Race 19 was one of the harder races overall.
• Vanessa completing the roadblock in the penultimate leg of Amazing Race 20, which required her to run on a conveyor belt and grab rubber chickens hanging from the ceiling. The reason it's so awesome? She did it with a sprained ankle.

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