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Team Steve and Linda Share Their Emotions of The Amazing Race
by Reg Seeton
 The
Amazing Race is in high gear for another season
as the second episode of the popular CBS reality
series saw the current field get cut by one more
team after racing from Switzerland to the German
Autobahn to Austria. In the premiere of The Amazing
Race 14, teams were put to the extreme test when
the first major challenge was a leap from the
second highest bungee jump in the world. This
week the teams hit the ground running but quickly
hit another extreme roadblock when they had to
choose between paragliding off a mountain or making
an hour trek downhill to meet their team
member. The tough choice became waiting for the
wind to die down so the jump could be made with
time gained or risking an hour walk and falling
behind.
Last week Virginia husband and wife team, Steve and Linda Cole, chose to send Steve on the hair raising bungee adventure. This week it was Linda's turn for a leap into the unknown off the side of a mountain. But once she climbed to the top, Linda soon learned that mother nature was a hidden competitor in the race since she had to give up the beauty of paragliding to keep their team alive in the game. However, despite making a smart decision to ditch the extreme stunt in favor of walking down the mountain, Linda got lost on a series of trails and fell too far behind to make up ground. But, as you'll learn from what Steve tells us about what you didn't see in the episode, it wasn't so much about Linda getting lost that got the married couple to leave the race as it was a husband's concern for the well-being of his wife.
When all of the teams crossed the finish line in the second episode of The Amazing Race, Steve and Linda became the second duo to be eliminated from the competition when they hit the mat last in front of host Phil Keoghan. After giving their all, the couple couldn't contain their emotions and love for one another for a race well run.
The morning after their elimination, we took a call from Steve and Linda for an exclusive chat about making it through two legs of The Amazing Race, what went wrong, their extreme adventures, and how the competition changed them for the better.
THE DEADBOLT: You guys should be really proud of yourselves. You did a lot better than teams from previous seasons.
LINDA COLE: That's really nice of you to say. Thank you.
STEVE COLE: We had a lot of really tough competitors, too.
THE DEADBOLT: Steve, what was that bungee jump like for you the previous week? What was going through your mind?
 STEVE:
You know, first of all, it was incredible. I
mean it was definitely an insane jump. But while
I was getting ready to do it, it didn't scare
me too much. I'm not going to say I wasn't a
little nervous, because I was. But when I stepped
up there, my biggest fear was falling before
I was ready to jump. But once they said, "Okay,
put your hands to your side and look up at the
mountains and then just jump to the spot you're
looking at," the free fall, you could feel the
wind, the G-forces. I mean, it was incredible.
I don't think I screamed any.
THE DEADBOLT: You had a big smile on your face, though.
STEVE: Yeah, it was fun. As soon as I got back, I was like, "Move over race, I'd love to do it again."
THE DEADBOLT: The week before, you guys blew everyone away at that cheese challenge. So you must've known you were in it. I mean in the competition.
STEVE: When we got to that point, we were like, "We're going to be out of this thing if we don't do something." And I think the desperation mode kicked in because we got up the hill.
LINDA: I could hardly get up the hill. Steve was having to push me up that hill and carry the carts.
 STEVE:
Yeah. I had to carry the carriers to carry the
cheese. I had to take both of those. I would
run up twenty feet, put them down and run and
slide back down the hill and push Linda up to
the carriers. I just repeated that until we
both got to the top. Then, after we did that,
we knew where everybody was. As we saw the teams
coming down, they had to make another trip up.
So I was like this is our opportunity to do
something. We've got to get all four down at
one time and there's no way I could get Linda
back up that hill again. So we took a couple
of minutes, we read the clue two or three times,
and it said that you had to use the carrier
to transport the cheese. But it didn't say how.
So we immediately started busting it up and
making a sled and we were very lucky that we
ended up getting it all down the hill.
THE DEADBOLT: That was a smart move at that point.
STEVE: Well, the thing that was funny - and you don't see on TV - is we made two sleds and Linda's just literally fell apart as she was carrying one. We had a hard time getting her one cheese down.
LINDA: And I had the cheese wrapped in rope with two pieces of board because I thought you had to keep the carrier with you.
THE DEADBOLT: Linda, when you were at the top of the hill waiting for the wind to die down, do you think even if you had done the paraglide that it would've made a difference?
LINDA: Well, I feel like I wish I would've waited on the wind, because what you don't see is that I was on that mountain for four hours. When I missed the turn then went all of the way down to the highway and then came back up trying to find my way back and I ended up on a bunch of fire trails, I started getting scared that I was going to get myself way lost in these mountains. So I went back down to the road. But when I got to the road I couldn't figure if the Gondola was to the left or the right. So I stopped a car to get directions and after four hours I was like, "Well, we're probably out of this thing. If I have to take a time penalty for taking a ride, then that's what I have to do." The lady had offered me a ride so I said, "Okay, I'm going to take the ride." Once I got back to the Gondolas, I found the trail to get down to the landing strip where we would've paraglided down to meet Steve. And so that's pretty much how that all played out.
STEVE: We'll never know. If she would've stayed and the wind did change, would we have been any further ahead? How many other teams would've stayed? So when we backed out and she decided to run, there were still teams waiting to go on the paraglide, and they were teams that were on a later flight. So we had a good hour jump on them. So I told Linda, "You know, there's an hour walk down the mountain." We figured a two-hour walk if Linda was slow, and it took her two-hours, and then the other team immediately gets there that's an hour behind us, and then another hour. Worst case scenario we would end up at the bottom of the hill at the same time. But we didn't anticipate on her getting lost [laughs].
THE DEADBOLT: Aside from the road-blocks and the detours, what was the biggest challenge for you?
 STEVE:
I think the biggest thing with me was that your
emotions are just all over the board. You go
from an extreme high one minute, you're happy
to be there, you're happy that you did good
on this, and you hate yourself because you didn't
do this or you didn't think of this. So your
emotions are just all over the board.
LINDA: And it's scary because in the very beginning you don't know who to trust because you haven't gotten to know the other teams as well. So, do you trust this person? Do you not trust that person? And you're all racing for a million dollars and you don't want to be the first one out. That's the scariest thing. And God bless Jennifer and Preston, I love them to death. I'm sorry they had to be out first, but we got through that.
STEVE: That was one of the things that caused us to start arguing the first night, was, "We're going to be last. We're going to get kicked out." We didn't want that, and I don't think anybody does, but it's a lot of stress that goes with it.
THE DEADBOLT: So what do you think the secret is to getting ahead of everyone?
STEVE: Honestly, I don't think you have to be first every time. I think the biggest key is: As long as you're eliminating one team at a time and you're staying in the race, then you can start to figure out who people are and how they're playing and then you can start to use it against them. But unfortunately we weren't in long enough to really realize what people's personalities were like. And we never could play that against anybody and they couldn't play it against us. But I think good communication is a big thing and, unfortunately, we didn't do too good at that at the beginning.
But after the first night, we regrouped and our whole game changed around. It wasn't because of arguing that we got eliminated. It wasn't because we weren't communicating well. It was just a mistake that Linda got lost. And she wasn't the only one to get lost on the mountain either. So we got eliminated by a mistake, which many people do, and it's the luck of the draw. Do you get a bad taxi? Do you get a good taxi? All it takes is one simple mistake. Bertram [Van Munster] said when we started this race, he said, "You know, this is my race and I could enter knowing everything I know about it and I could come in last place." So you don't know what's going to happen. All it takes is one simple mistake.
 LINDA:
And I wasn't that physically fit. But the thing
that people don't see is that as soon as we
put that video in, Steve started taking me to
the Y[MCA]. I lost thirty-five pounds. I learned
how to swim. I also started climbing ladders
so I could get rid of my fear of heights. I
mean he was really encouraging and he was trying
so hard to get me prepared. And I was working
really hard at it myself, but it just wasn't
enough.
STEVE: It wasn't the physical part that actually got us eliminated, you know? It was one big mistake. Actually, if you went back and looked, had we not made other mistakes after Linda had gotten lost we could've still possibly have been in it.
LINDA: He got worried when I got off of the mountain and he made us stop and made me get some water, because I had no water for four hours running down that mountain. He was really concerned. I was like, "No, no, no, let's keep going." He said, "No, you're going to stop. I'm not going to let you get hurt on this." Even though it doesn't always show that he cared so much, he really loves me.
THE DEADBOLT: Oh, I think it showed tremendously, even at the end. Steve, when you were so emotional, that all came through.
STEVE: That broke my heart. You know, when you get out there - and Linda did this more for me than she did for her, and I respect her for that - she was doing her best. She wasn't running nowhere near as fast as a lot of the other competitors, but she was running as fast as she could run. When it boiled down to it, it wasn't her physical strength that caused us to be eliminated. It was a mistake. After we got over that first little hurdle of us breaking down, that was just total nerves was all that was. We typically aren't like that and I respect her every bit. Then, especially after all the time she lost on the mountain, then she's concerned that I'm worried about her. The last thing I want to do, she had a bad enough time, is just sit there and run her into the ground and make it worse. We went into this thing as a team and we lost as a team, and we respectfully lose. If we got beat, we deserved to be beat. And if we won, we would've deserved to win.
THE DEADBOLT: Not a lot of people look at things that way. It's a really good way to look at it.
STEVE: We've had different opinions from a bunch of different people. Some people don't like me, some people don't like Linda. Some people don't like us and some people do like us, you know? And it doesn't matter. We know what we did. Until you actually get out there and run this race, and I'm famous for doing it - "Why is this guy crying? He's such a sissy." I did the same thing that I criticize other people for doing. But until you actually get out there and do it, you don't fully comprehend all of the different concepts of what's going on. So I totally respect her for doing it and I admire her. She gave it her best and that's all I asked her to do. And she told me, "You're going to hate me when this is all done." And I mean I'll talk all the way up to my last breath ...
LINDA: He has never once said it was my fault. He has just been a trooper. He's been wonderful.
STEVE: The thing is, going all the way back to the casting, had it not been for her I may not have been picked at all. So, I mean, I can't criticize her. It's probably her that got us there to begin with [laughs].
THE DEADBOLT: The snap decision to walk down the mountain. That was the most important decision, I think, that you guys made.
 STEVE:
I think that a lot of split second decisions
were the ones that were going to make us or
the ones that were going to break us. And the
cheese hill, it just so happened it worked in
our favor and the gliding it worked against
us. That's part of The Amazing Race, you know?
You have to make those split second decisions.
You don't know what's wrong and you don't know
what's right. You're not sitting at home where
you see what the team did before you, you're
out there actually doing it. You have to decide
right then and there.
LINDA: I wish I could've glided down that mountain. That just looked so beautiful. And Mel, wasn't he just beautiful?
THE DEADBOLT: [laughs] He was.
LINDA: Not only was he beautiful on the show, he's just a beautiful person. Actually, all of the racers are really fantastic people.
STEVE: Mel called me up last night and he talked to me for about thirty - forty-five minutes. He's just really nice - "I'm sorry you got eliminated. I didn't realize you all did this." They're just super nice and then they tried to help us when we were going down the Autobahn. You know, they stopped and waited for us to catch up to them and we were following them. Of course I didn't realize that we actually were going a little faster than we were supposed to and somehow we passed them and lost them. I thought they dumped us, but they didn't [laughs].
But all of the racers are super people. I don't know how the other seasons are doing, but so far, with us, all of the cast members have been great. You know, we've all been sharing e-mails together and everybody is getting along well. We plan on doing stuff together. So I feel very fortunate. I hate it that they were so competitive because it cost us [laughs]. But I'm glad we got such a good group of people to run the race with.
THE DEADBOLT: How do you think the race has changed you guys for the better?
 LINDA:
I think we've made some really good friends,
like the people that we raced with and stuff.
We got to see a lot of beautiful things and
we got to challenge ourselves and it's just
been incredible. It's been kind of weird because
people notice you in stores and things like
that I'm not used to.
STEVE: Linda and I both lead pretty private lives and so we're sort of suspicious and always think someone is always out to get us or we can't trust this person. We sort of opened up since we did this and the amount of friends made - Of course friendship takes time, but the amount of people that we met and the amount of friendships that are starting has just been incredible. I mean, we met all of the people from this race, we're starting to meet people from other races, and we're meeting people who've been on Survivor. So we're starting to open up and form friendships and it's actually a lot of fun. That's how it's changed our lives. Of course only the future will tell how much it's changed our lives, but so far it's been pretty good.
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