Raleigh’s Holdernesses won ‘The Amazing Race.’ Look back at season highlights.
Raleigh internet personalities Kim and Penn Holderness won Season 33 of CBS’s “The Amazing Race,” crossing the finish line first in Wednesday night’s season finale, and walking away with $1 million.
In a season unlike any other in the history of the long-running show, the Holdernesses and 10 other teams of two began competing for the $1 million prize back in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The pandemic shut down production for 19 months before the racers met back up to finish the race in fall 2021.
As the teams traveled to seven countries and 17 cities throughout the season, the Holdernesses were the most consistent duo, winning more legs of the race than any other team.
The News & Observer followed along with the couple’s journey each week of the race, but if you’re just catching up — or if you watched it all and just want to relive it — we’ve compiled some of their best moments from this season.
Off to a slow start in London
The first legs of the race took place in London, where teams completed challenges involving puzzles, cake decorating, dart throwing and mail sorting.
Kim and Penn got off to a mediocre start, finishing at the first pit stop in 4th place, and in 5th place at the second pit stop.
They worked well together in their first-ever challenge in the race, piecing together a puzzle, but couldn’t quite seem to break into the front of the pack.
Penn second-guessed himself early in the race, as he easily found a clue hidden in a large stack of mail, but thought it might have been “too easy” and stayed behind to look for another, non-existent clue — losing precious time in a race that’s largely about speed and timing.
The duo also had to make a couple of attempts at the cake decorating challenge, also setting them back some.
But it didn’t take long for the duo to become a competitive force in the next legs of the race.
Singing and dancing in Scotland
Fresh off the London leg of the race, the teams raced to Glasgow, Scotland, still in a pre-pandemic world.
Kim and Penn came out to an early lead in the Scotland leg, appearing to navigate their manual transmission car with ease as other teams struggled and fell behind.
At a roadblock challenge in this leg, Kim had to correctly assemble, then play, a traditional Scottish bagpipe. The duo continued with the music theme at their next challenge, a detour challenge in which they donned traditional Scottish kilts and performed a Scottish song and dance.
On The Holderness Family Instagram account, Kim said she had never sang in one of the family’s popular online videos, so she was nervous about debuting her vocal skills on national TV. And Penn, in his own words, turned into a “diva” after a few missteps in the performance.
But the pair still managed to leave the detour in the lead and win the leg, marking the duo’s first victory in the race.
At the end of the leg, though, host Phil Keoghan announced to the group that production would be coming to a halt due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, teams didn’t know when or if they’d be returning to the race. As viewers now know, production resumed last fall 2021 — and the Holdernesses’ time away from the race didn’t make them any less competitive.
Bungee jumping in Switzerland
After restarting the race, racers spent two episodes in Switzerland, where they completed challenges involving climbing mountains, turning flags, making belts, climbing a lot of stairs — and bungee jumping from a dam.
The bungee jumping task was a roadblock challenge, meaning only one member from each team could complete it. The Holdernesses elected Kim, who was noticeably nervous.
Penn gave her a pep talk of sorts before she went up to jump, saying “It’s ‘The Amazing Race.’ They won’t let you die.”
It seemed to help, as Kim successfully completed the jump, with Penn watching from the sidelines. But Penn also became noticeably emotional, saying he was so proud of Kim, especially since he knew “how hard that was for her.”
At one point, Penn said through tears that he was “imagining life without her.”
The Holdernesses both made it out of the experience alive, finishing in 2nd place in the first Switzerland episode, and in 3rd place in the second one.
Eating maggot cheese in France
After the Switzerland episodes, the teams traveled to France, where they also spent two episodes.
In the first episode, the Holdernesses finished in 1st place after completing challenges involving mules, sliding down natural waterslides and kayaking.
The most iconic moment of the France episodes, though, was when the teams had to eat casu martzu, or maggot-infested cheese in which the maggots are still alive when you eat it.
Like the rest of the teams, the Holdernesses had mixed reactions to the cheese. Kim seemed to enjoy it, asking the challenge’s judge questions about the maggots and saying she was going to get some cheese to-go. But Penn clearly didn’t enjoy Kim’s commentary, appearing to almost vomit mid-bug cheese snack.
The second France episode also included one of two references to Duke University by the Holdernesses this season, as they used the college’s name as a memory aid for a later task.
The couple had been assigned a mule named Duke in the previous France episode — something Penn, who went to the University of Virginia and is a North Carolina Tar Heels fan, told The N&O was a hard task for him.
Hitting their stride, the Holdernesses finished the second France episode in 1st place, as they had done in the previous episode.
Turning over stones in Greece
After the two episodes in France, the teams then traveled to Greece, where they spent two episodes completing tasks involving spelling, eating and memorization.
In the first Greece episode, Penn showed off his impressive “hyperfocus” abilities in a memorization and recall challenge, something he attributed to his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
The first Greece episode also marked the team’s third-straight 1st place finish, bringing their total before the finale to four wins — more than any other team this season.
The second Greece episode included the season’s most painstaking and grueling challenge, in which one racer from each team had to turn over hundreds of stones to find coins hidden underneath.
Kim and Penn had arrived to the challenge first, but were soon put on a level playing field, as all of the racers ended up taking multiple hours to complete the task.
The duo finished the Greece leg in 2nd place, setting them up to leave in the second departure group at the beginning of the season finale, which kicked off in Portugal.
Kim & Penn win it all in Los Angeles
Kim and Penn’s journey on the race came down to the wire in the season finale, which included two legs of the race: one in Portugal, and a final one in Los Angeles.
After rowing boats, counting columns and painting sardine cans, the duo finished the Portugal leg in 2nd place.
For the final leg in L.A., the three remaining teams had to open locked clue boxes on the top of a hotel, smash piñatas and add foley sound effects to previous “Amazing Race” episodes.
The racers’ final task required them to complete a memory puzzle, in which they had to solve riddles about challenges they had completed earlier in the race.
Kim and Penn arrived to the final task well after leaders Raquel and Cayla, but the Holdneresses worked diligently to solve the puzzle. After several attempts, they got the go-ahead from the task’s judge, finishing the puzzle first.
The duo ran through the tunnel at the Dignity Health Sports Park, home of the LA Galaxy soccer team, to the finish line, winning the race and $1 million.
The duo seemed to be in disbelief that they had won, but talked with host Phil Keoghan about their kids, who were their primary source of inspiration throughout the race.
“I hope what our kids saw is that it didn’t matter where we were gonna finish, we were gonna work as hard as we could, and that the finish doesn’t really matter,” Penn said. “Even though we finished first, which is kind of awesome.”
The duo posted a video to their popular social media accounts Thursday, chronicling their journey on the show through song and showing their kids’ reaction to learning their parents had won the race.
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 12:20 PM.
