Ex-Dolphin cheerleaders talk about carrying pigs, eating scorpions on Amazing Race

By Tom Jicha
TV/Radio Writer
The Sun Sentinel
May 12, 2009

*Photos from the Season Finale Party (Zimbio)

Jaime Edmondson and Cara Rosenthal didn’t win The Amazing Race and the $1 million grand prize that goes with victory. But in finishing second, the former Dolphin cheerleaders from Boca Raton might have run the most amazing race in the history of the CBS reality series. It’s not only that they had the best finish ever for an all-female team. They did it despite built-in advantages for their competitors.

Three stages took place in China, where the ultimate winners, Chinese-American brother and sister Victor and Tammy Jih, had a command of the language the others didn’t. This almost proved to be the downfall of Jaime and Cara. They spent five hours wandering the streets of Beijing attempting to get directions from people who couldn’t understand them. It put them into a hole they almost were unable to overcome.

“We each had 20-pound backpacks, we had on (theatrical) makeup that was burning our faces and we were in these bulky (opera) costumes,” Cara said. “The bottom of our feet were bruised and bloody, but we kept going.”

At times Jaime said to herself, “I can’t walk another step.” But rather than let down her teammate, she resolved, “If I have to, I’ll crawl.”

In the final stage, the three-remaining teams had to carry a 140-pound pig on a bamboo pole down the beach toward a luau pit. Tammy had a strong male partner in Victor. Luke Adams, who with his mother Marge finished third, is a strapping young guy. Luke figured the best way to carry out the task was to hoist the bar with the pig hanging from it on their shoulders.

Jaime and Cara also came to this conclusion but they didn’t have the upper-body strength to get it that high, so they carried it at waist-level and had to stop every few steps to regrip the pole and regather their strength. It cost them quite a bit of time, perhaps the margin by which they fell short.

If that wasn’t their undoing, a Hawaiian cab driver, who got lost, then had to stop for gas, was. “It was heart-breaking,” Jaime said. “I could accept losing if it was because we couldn’t compete but not because our fate was in the hands of a cab driver.”

She expects she’ll have nightmares the rest of her life, she said, wondering about the, “What ifs?”

It was almost as if the deck was stacked against the women at every turn. The one stage of the race in which they arrived at the pit stop first, they were told it wasn’t really the finish line, that this phase would continue into the next episode. Nevertheless, they were rewarded off the air with a pair of jet skis.

CBS doesn’t reveal the second prize but it is believed to be $100,000. Cara and Jaime, otherwise forthcoming and gregarious, went silent when the subject was broached. (A CBS publicist was monitoring the conversation.)

When not at a physical disadvantage, they were remarkable. During the round of four, when it looked like they were about to be eliminated, Cara aced one of their ickiest tasks. She devoured a buffet of scorpions, larva, grass hoppers and star fish.

“Cara was a rock star,” Jaime said. “She ate them in seven minutes. They said it was the fastest anyone had done it. I was grossed out but amazed.”

Since they got back and the show started airing, they get a rock star’s reaction when people recognize them. “It’s surreal that people know who we are..and care,” Cara said.

Would they do it again?

The reply came in a chorus. “Absolutely.”