After finishing in fourth place on season 1 of The Amazing Race, Kevin O’Connor and Drew Feinberg returned to the show for its 11th season, The Amazing Race: All-Star Edition. Kevin and Drew were affectionately known as the “fraternity brothers” during the premiere season, where they quickly became fan favorites. Last night, unfortunately, saw the dream end for the two best friends, as they were eliminated from the race. Drew and Kevin took some to talk to us at BuddyTV about their time on Amazing Race: All-Stars.
When did you first hear from CBS about the possibility of doing an Amazing Race All-Stars?
Kevin: The rumors were flying around during the summer some time. We actually got a call in July just saying, “Hey, if we do this, would you be interested?”
And you were interested from the beginning?
Drew: Absolutely.
Were you both really excited about doing it or were there any trepidations at all?
Kevin: None.
Drew, you looked like you were having some bad luck from the beginning of the race. How badly do you think the oxygen deprivation or altitude sickness affected you on that last leg?
Drew: Altitude sickness, if you’ve ever had it, it’s really bad. I don’t know how to compare it to sea sickness because I’ve never had that but let me tell you, you get a headache that feels like your head is in a vice and someone’s just squeezing the vice; slowly and surely squeezing it. I was vomiting all night and after I was done vomiting I had the dry heaves all night. I had to sleep on the floor, which many of us did, but I was furthest away from the fireplace so I had the chills and they had to give me oxygen all night. It was pretty bad.
Did any of the teams annoy you? Was there anybody that you really didn’t get along with?
Drew: No, we kind of got along with everybody. Even the incident with David and Mary with the luggage, they didn’t show it afterwards, but that became a non-issue and I’m very good friends wit Dave and Mary now.
Kevin: We all laugh about it. It wasn’t nearly as scandalous as it looked on TV.
Is there anything from last night’s episode that they didn’t show that you wish they had?
Kevin: Yup, absolutely. Right from episode one, do you remember we completely destroyed our car just trying to get there? Well, the front end was destroyed so it was un-drivable. So what they did was they held us back, they made us fiddle around with the car for about 20 minutes and then we said, “Okay, we can’t drive it, we can’t get it out of the mud, we’re going to try and fix the flat.” And then on top of that they gave us a 15-minute penalty. So when it says that we left at such and such time, add about another half an hour, 45 minutes on that and that’s when we actually left. So given the fact that we finished five minutes behind the last two teams, I mean that half hour penalty was big. I don’t know why they didn’t show that because it’s very part and partial to the story that’s shown. Drew getting oxygen wasn’t part and partial to the story that’s shown. You’d already seen enough of him falling and nursing his various injuries and talking about his medicine. The oxygen was nothing. They should have used that time to show we had a half an hour penalty, that’d make more sense.
Why do you think they didn’t show that?
Kevin: You’re guess is as good as mine. My guess is it probably didn’t come out the way they liked and they decided not to do it.
There were times when they made it look like Drew didn’t want to be on the race. Was that the editing or were you feeling rundown?
Drew: At that point, I really wanted no part of the race. I was hurt, I had that sickness the night before the episode, so I was still kind of recovering from that and the existing injuries I had going into the race. I was hot and I was thirsty and I was a lot of things and I was pretty fed up so it took me a couple of minutes to gather myself together.
What team or teams are you rooting for as the season goes on?
Kevin: Danny and Oswald. They’re a lot of fun and we’re friendly with them. They have the same sort of outlook on racing as we do. They don’t take it terribly seriously, but at the same time they get done what they have to do. So we’re rooting for them.
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