‘Amazing Race’ Week 7: Raleigh’s Holderness duo travels to Greece. How’d they do?
Kim and Penn Holderness, part of the Raleigh family known for “Christmas Jammies” and other viral videos, are competing on this season of CBS’s “The Amazing Race,” and The News & Observer is following their journey on the show each week.
On last week’s episode, the remaining teams — the Holdernesses, plus four other duos — remained in Corsica, France, where the previous leg of the race had also taken place, and completed challenges involving memorization, fishing nets and maggot cheese.
The Holderness duo had an impressive showing, finishing the leg in 1st place and winning a trip to Turkey. The victory was the team’s second in a row and marked the team’s third 1st place finish in the race overall. By our count, that tied them for the most wins with best friends Ryan and Dusty, who also have three 1st place finishes.
No one was eliminated last week, as it was a non-elimination leg of the race. That means there are five teams, including the Holdernesses, left competing this week.
The teams are set to travel on this week’s episode to Halkidiki, Greece, where they’ll be tested on their memory and spelling skills.
Will the Holdernesses continue their winning streak? What challenges will they complete? Who will be eliminated?
Let’s find out in this recap of Week 7 of “The Amazing Race.”
How did the Holderness team place this week?
For the third straight week, and for the fourth time in the race as a whole, Kim and Penn finished in 1st place.
If you’re keeping track at home, that means the Holdernesses have now won more legs of the race than any other team this season.
For their victory this week, the duo won $7,500 each.
What challenges did teams complete this week?
This week’s leg of the race kicked off with the teams leaving Corsica, France, and traveling to Halkidiki, Greece.
Since Penn and Kim finished in 1st place last week, they left the Corsica pit stop first, along with last week’s 2nd place finishers, Raquel and Cayla. Lulu and Lala and Ryan and Dusty followed in the next group, and last week’s last place finishers, Arun and Natalia, left last.
On a scenic beach, the teams opened their first clues of this leg, which told them to drive themselves in a stick shift car to a countryside olive grove to find their next clue among the trees.
The olive grove clue told the teams to travel to Marianna’s Vineyards for their next clue, which turned out to be for a roadblock challenge that required one person from each team to make dolmades — a traditional Greek dish with rice, vegetables and spices wrapped in grape leaves.
Only one person from each team can complete roadblock challenges, and the Holdernesses elected Kim for this one. After getting about halfway through the challenge, she realized that she had used the wrong technique to wrap some of her leaves, so she decided to rewrap those before going to the judge for approval.
She ran into another brief struggle after taking them to the judge, but quickly corrected the presentation, allowing the duo to leave the challenge in 1st place.
The teams’ next clue instructed them to travel to Mamo’s Kantina Stand, a beachside food stand, to eat souvlaki, a traditional Greek fast food.
To complete the challenge, each team had to order the dish by correctly spelling souvlaki to the food stand worker. After ordering the food, the teams ate their souvlaki and had to look for a clue inside the food’s wrapper.
Kim spelled souvlaki correctly on the first try, then the duo quickly downed what looked like a very tasty snack. They struggled briefly, not understanding that the next clue was on the wrapper and initially throwing it away. After realizing their mistake, the pair dug through the trash and found the wrapper clue, which told them to go to St. George’s Church.
At St. George’s, the teams found a clue for a second roadblock challenge, which required them to listen to a lengthy sermon from a priest, then correctly identify artistic icons of saints in the correct order that they were revealed in the sermon.
The challenge seemed to be a tough task for some teams, as the sermon was pretty lengthy and included lots of small details about the saints, which were difficult to then recall to the judge.
Penn, though, completed the challenge easily, in one try.
In an interview, Penn said that he has ADHD, which could have made the task even harder — but he explained that it actually allowed him to “hyperfocus” and absorb the information with few issues.
The couple also said on their podcast last week that Penn has a photographic memory, which could have come in handy here, too.
Upon completing the challenge, Penn was clearly impressed with himself — as was Kim — and the duo had a brief celebration before continuing on in the race. (We were also impressed by his performance, if we’re being honest.)
After completing the roadblock, the teams opened the last clue of this leg, instructing them to travel to Nea Kallikrateia, on the Aegean Sea, for the pit stop.
Episode highlight from the Holderness duo
Aside from their third consecutive 1st place finish, our highlight from the Holdernesses this week has to be Penn’s stellar performance at the sermon and saints roadblock challenge.
While some other teams seemed to struggle, he seemed to complete the task with ease, and it was impressive to watch.
How did the other teams do this week?
▪ Flight attendants Raquel and Cayla struggled at the first roadblock challenge, even ending up in last place at one point, but they eventually made up lost ground and finished in 2nd place again this week.
▪ Best friends Ryan and Dusty finished in 3rd place this week.
▪ Father and daughter Arun and Natalia finished in 4th place this week.
Which team was eliminated this week?
Twin sisters and radio hosts Lulu and Lala struggled to navigate to the souvlaki challenge, even ending up at the pit stop prematurely at one point after getting lost. Their struggles continued once they finally arrived to that challenge, as they couldn’t figure out that the next clue was on the souvlaki wrapper.
After falling behind — and even eating two souvlakis — they never made up lost ground.
The duo finished in 5th place and was eliminated.
They made sure to go out with a splash, though. After arriving to the pit stop and learning that they had been eliminated, the sisters jumped into the water, which host Phil Keoghan said was “the most dramatic exit” the show has seen in a while.
Looking forward to next week’s episode
The preview for next week’s episode shows the teams completing challenges that involve breaking dishes and turning over stones. At one point, Kim refers to a challenge as a “nightmare,” while Ryan and Dusty say it could be “anybody’s race.”
After a non-elimination leg last week, we’re finally down to four teams in the race, and things are heating up.
Will Kim and Penn win their fifth leg of the race? Who will be eliminated?
We’ll see you back here next week to find out.
More about Kim & Penn Holderness
Most people recognize Kim and Penn from their online videos posted on “The Holderness Family” accounts — most notably “Christmas Jammies,” which went viral in 2013 and has more than 18 million views to-date.
Prior to making the switch to full-time content creation, Kim and Penn both worked in TV news. They have a combined 25 years of experience in the industry, including Penn’s six years as an evening anchor at WNCN/CBS 17 in Raleigh.
Following the success of “Jammies,” the Raleigh couple, along with their two children, now “chronicle their marriage and their family with funny music videos, vlogs, skits and a podcast.” The couple also released a book in March 2021.
Previous ‘Amazing Race’ recaps
Catch up on our previous coverage of Kim and Penn and their journey on “The Amazing Race” with these stories:
▪ Raleigh’s Holderness Family of ‘Christmas Jammies’ fame to compete on ‘The Amazing Race’
▪ Week 2 recap: Glasgow, Scotland
▪ Week 4 recap: Switzerland, part two
▪ Week 5 recap: Corsica, France
▪ Week 6 recap: Corsica, France, part two
How to watch ‘The Amazing Race’
New episodes of “The Amazing Race” air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
You can also stream episodes after they air at cbs.com/shows/amazing_race.
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 10:15 PM with the headline "‘Amazing Race’ Week 7: Raleigh’s Holderness duo travels to Greece. How’d they do?."
