The Deadbolt Exclusive - The Agony of Defeat with Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race

The Agony of Defeat with Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race
by Reg Seeton

This season of The Amazing Race on CBS saw the teams head to Asia where the first four legs took The Amazing Race pairs through the streets of Japan to the waterways of Vietnam to the markets of Cambodia. In fact, according to friends and Amazing Racers, Zev Glassenberg and Justin Kanew, the fourth leg of The Amazing Race sounded very familiar in a Hollywood way. Much like the previous legs, The Amazing Race teams had to brave crowded streets while working through Detours and Roadblocks, as Zev and Justin raced their way through a packed Cambodian market before heading off to a monastery to visit monks for a few "Monkey Maneuvers".

Although Zev completed the task of mimicking monkey motion to get out in front of The Amazing Race pack, all was not right when Zev and Justin hit the mat in front of Phil in first place. In one of the most gut-wrenching first place finishes we've seen, Zev and Justin were forced to give up their lead due to lost travel documents somewhere along the leg. Despite retracing their steps in a cab, Zev and Justin went from first to last in an instant and were eliminated from The Amazing Race. As Zev told us below, it was awful.

Shortly after their elimination from The Amazing Race, we caught up with Zev and Justin to find out what went wrong, whether they eventually found the lost passport, how the race changed their lives, and what it was like to go from first to last in a simian heartbeat.

THE DEADBOLT: So what was Sean Penn, Cambodia like?

ZEV GLASSENBERG: [laughs] It was pretty cool. It's a nice little place.

JUSTIN KANEW: Yeah, we actually enjoyed it. But that's mostly because we stayed at a great hotel we really liked.

ZEV: I like the city, all of the temples and all of that stuff.

THE DEADBOLT: How did it feel going from first to last so quickly?

ZEV: How do you think it felt?

THE DEADBOLT: [laughs] Terrible.

ZEV: It felt awful. No, it was awful, man. It was awful.

THE DEADBOLT: How long did it take for you guys to accept that you were finally out of the race?

JUSTIN: We're still waiting for Bertram [van Munster] to call us and tell us they changed their mind.

THE DEADBOLT: So did you guys find the passport? Did you know where it was?

ZEV: Yeah, we knew where it was. Justin, you like answering this question.

JUSTIN: [laughs] When we found it at the embassy and they told us where someone had discovered it, we realized what had happened. I had been carrying it in our fanny pack that we had, all of our valuable stuff in, and one of the clues read that - When we were going to the monkey place, it said that you had to be quiet around the monks. So we thought we had to go inside the monastery. When we went inside the monastery, next to the monkey challenge it was really dark in there, I reached into the fanny pack to pull out the headlight we had and I must have pulled out the passport with it.

THE DEADBOLT: When you guys hit the mat, did Phil offer you guys a trip?

ZEV: Yeah, we won motorcycles.

THE DEADBOLT: Really?

JUSTIN: Zev had a great line on the mat about the motorcycles. Zev, what was it?

ZEV: I said, "Motorcycles? I can barely drive a car."

JUSTIN: [laughs] Then he said, "Yeah, like my mom is going to let me ride a motorcycle." I think it was first time that anyone almost rejected the prize [laughs].

THE DEADBOLT: What was the Reunification Palace like? Did you guys actually stay there?

ZEV: No, nobody stayed there. It's not a house.

THE DEADBOLT: Well, where did you guys stay?

ZEV: That night in Vietnam we stayed at a hotel.

JUSTIN: It was New World Hotel.

ZEV: Yeah, New World Hotel.

JUSTIN: Being at the Reunification Palace was cool because we all kind of knew what it was and what it represented. But we didn't actually sleep there.

ZEV: We just ran on the lawn. We didn`t even get to go behind it.

JUSTIN: But we almost ran inside by accident because we were following Lance and Keri, which is rarely a good idea.

ZEV: They actually should've beat us. But they were walking around instead of running.

JUSTIN: They were walking and they were lost.

THE DEADBOLT: At what point in the race did you feel, "You know, we can win this thing."?

JUSTIN: [laughs] Right before we lost it.

ZEV: No, we felt that right from the beginning, right when we applied, right when we sent in our application.

THE DEADBOLT: So in what ways has the race made you guys better friends?

ZEV: It hasn't. [laughs] No, we've just become stronger and tighter and now we have this great memory to look back on.

THE DEADBOLT: Zev, how has the race changed your daily routine now that it's over. How has it changed it for the better?

ZEV: I just know I can go out and not have to do my daily routine and go out and try new things and explore a little more.

THE DEADBOLT: Justin, what ways has it changed you?

JUSTIN: I'm definitely more interested in getting out and having experiences that I wasn't before. I mean, I was kind of settled into a routine there for awhile and now I'm looking for the next adventure around every corner. So I definitely want to get out and do things. Hopefully with the Zev-man. But he hates when I call him that, by the way.

ZEV: No, I don't. I don't like Z-man.

JUSTIN: Oh, Z-man. Sorry. But I'm definitely looking for adventures now in a way I wasn't before.

THE DEADBOLT: Is there anything that you guys wish we got to see that didn't air? One of the teams told me that Lance broke his stick shift that we didn't get to see.

ZEV: He actually didn't break it, Brian broke it.

JUSTIN: That's the secret.

ZEV: There is one little [event]. We took a little shuttle ride in Japan that we would've liked everybody to see. But it was a little too - CBS probably doesn't want anybody to see it.

-- Reg Seeton