‘The Amazing Race’: Zach & Nate Break Down Their Leg 1 Mistake & More

The Amazing Race kicked off its 39th season in Vancouver on the September 29 episode, but for Zach Johnson and Nate Johnson, the journey ended there. The brothers were the last team to meet Phil Keoghan at the Pit Stop, eliminating them from the race after the first leg.

Things got off to a bad start for Zach and Nate on the way to the first Roadblock. While all the other teams got in taxis, they decided to make their way there on foot, and it ultimately resulted in them falling behind, although they didn’t realize it until they were the last ones to reach the clue box.

“The truth is, you watch the episodes, and it’s like … everybody’s in taxis. Like, obviously, there’s taxis. But you practice how you play, and practicing for us was running,” Nate told TV Insider. “Never in our lives have I taken a taxi once. So, initially, I’m not like, ‘Oh, let me go hail a taxi.’ I don’t even know, still, to this day, if I can hail a cab!”

Zach also pointed out that the stadium wasn’t a “crazy far distance” from the starting point. “It was within about a mile, maybe a mile and a half,” he explained. “So we’re thinking, ‘Hey, we can run that in 13, 15 minutes, at most. So it’s not going to take us forever. But come to find out, the taxi ride was only, like, seven, eight minutes. I think we went to default settings of, hey, we know what we can do. We can definitely run.”

Sonja Flemming/CBS

He noted that their backs were to the other teams when the decisions were being made. “We didn’t see everybody jumping into cabs,” Zach shared. “I’m sure that if I could have caught somebody out of the corner of my eye, I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s right, we can do that. That’s an option for us.'”

The guys said they discussed using the Express Pass once they fell behind, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to at the Roadblock or Detour because other teams got there first and used theirs (only one Express Pass can be used on each task).

Still, it was a close race between Nate and Zach and Daisha Wilks and Dalton Hamby. The brothers only finished about “two or three minutes” behind the team in front of them. “We pulled into the botanical gardens, and just by sheer luck, we took the path of least resistance,” Nate revealed. “[Them finishing] before us could have just been from the taxi ride, like, us hitting the red light and them getting the green light. It was neck-and-neck there.”

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And one thing viewers didn’t see is that Nate and Zach’s water taxi driver took them to a different drop-off point than the other teams. “We got dropped off another mile and a half away over the bridge,” Nate explained. “So now we’re running back to [the Detour], and it shows that we really pushed ourselves to get back to where we were.”

The Amazing Race, Season 39, Episode 2, Thursday, October 1, 9:30/8:30c, CBS

The Amazing Race, Season 39, Wednesdays, 9:30/8:30c, CBS