Since its debut in 2001, The Amazing Race has been a cult-favorite reality TV competition and a perennial award winner, earning the Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program 10 times since the award's inception in 2003. The show is still going strong today, with more than 30 seasons under its belt and counting.
With all the history behind The Amazing Race and all the trails it's blazed, it's worth looking back at the show's earliest seasons and their winners to get an idea of how far the series has come. These winners set the precedent that makes the show what it is today.
Tyler and James were friends and male models who leveraged a strong physical game and solid alliances into a $1 million win in The Amazing Race season 10.
Memorably, Tyler and James developed a heated rivalry with beauty queens Dustin and Kandice. In Leg 12, Tyler and James used the new The Amazing Race season twist, the Marked for Elimination penalty, to target their rivals. Knowing Dustin and Kandice wouldn't make up the 30-minute penalty, Tyler and James followed the other pair throughout the leg, making good time in the other team's slipstream before pulling ahead, sending Dustin and Kandice packing.
B.J. and Tyler remain two of the most lovable and beloved teams in The Amazing Race's history. Forever known as "the hippies," the best friends from California had a laid-back approach and outgoing personalities that endeared them to fans.
Not the most physical competitors, B.J. and Tyler struggled throughout the season. But they made up for it in the mental challenge of the iconic final leg, in which teams had to identify the flags of all the countries they'd visited and place them in the correct order. The culturally aware hippies completed the task with relative ease and raced ahead to win.
The Amazing Race tried an experiment in season 8, for the first time letting families compete in teams of four. The Linz Family, a quartet of siblings in their late teens and early 20s, pulled off the big win. Notably, the Linz kids gave half of the $1 million prize to their parents and split the other half among themselves.
Ironically, the Linzes did so well during their season that their most iconic leg may be their bumbling near-elimination on the first episode. After coming in ninth out of 10 teams, no one imagined the Linz family winning the season. But after that, they placed in the top three in every subsequent leg but one.
CBS may have wanted Rob and Amber to be the stars of this season due to their success on the network's sister series, Survivor. But despite their strong showing, they couldn't outshine married couple Uchenna and Joyce, who became fan favorites.
Ask any The Amazing Race fan to name their favorite moment on the show, and more than a few will say Leg 8 of season 7. In order to earn a Fast Forward in the race, Joyce had to agree to have her head shaved. She didn't hesitate. "It's just hair," she declared. Her sacrifice gave her and her husband an advantage that they were able to turn into $1 million.
Freddy and Kendra are one of the most memorable teams from The Amazing Race, but not for winning. Years later, they're still among the most hated players because of their terrible attitudes and racist remarks.
The controversy over Kendra's attitude peaked during Leg 5 when the teams visited the country of Senegal in Africa, about which Kendra said, "This country is wretched and disgusting. And they just keep breeding and breeding in this poverty." Despite the outcry over her comments, Kendra never apologized, claiming to TV Guide that what she said was "taken out of context."
Chip and Kim weren't on many fans' radar as potential winners early on in their season, stumbling out of the gate with an 8th-place finish in Legs 1 and 2 and 7th place in Leg 3. But they turned things around by winning Leg 4 and showed up strong in several more legs throughout the season.
In the end, it was a twist of fate and a stroke of luck that allowed them to pull it off. A delayed flight gave the couple a chance to buy new plane tickets on a different flight that wound up giving them enough of a time advantage during the final leg to win it all.
Reichen and Chip aren't known among fans as one of the best teams to ever win The Amazing Race. But they were able to skate past their much more ill-fortuned and mishap-prone competitors in a season that fans and critics regard as mediocre.
In the final leg, Reichen and Chip didn't have to struggle to secure their win. They performed well at every stage of the final leg while the two other teams stumbled. Kelly and John failed to learn as much about their final destination as Reichen and Chip did, while David and Jeff forgot to book crucial plane tickets that left them hopelessly stranded. Reichen and Chip thus won with ease.
Flo and Zach were the first co-ed pair to win The Amazing Race, and although they were platonic friends and not a romantic couple, they're best remembered for the one-sided antagonism of their relationship, with Flo often screaming at her partner. Flo also developed a crush on Drew from a competing team, openly flirting with him during the race. (Flo and Drew wound up dating for several years.)
Aside from their personal behavior, Flo and Zach are noted for accomplishing something that has yet to be matched in The Amazing Race history. In Leg 7, they used a Fast Forward that allowed them to skip the country of Austria entirely. It remains the only time a team has won a season of The Amazing Race without visiting all the countries in that season's route.
Chris and Alex were best buds from Boston who were physically dominant in season 2 of The Amazing Race, and they gave fans a final leg that remains iconic today. When Elise Doganieri and Bertram van Munster created The Amazing Race, they must have dreamed for a season ender exactly like this one, which came down to a literal foot race to the finish line.
Chris and Alex reached the end of the final leg at the same time as rivals Tara and Wil. In fact, Tara and Wil were a little bit ahead as Chris and Alex tailed them through San Francisco during the final leg. But Tara ran out of energy when she needed it most at the end of the race, allowing Chris and Alex to literally run past her. The friends crossed the finish line first, earning the $1 million.
Rob and Brennan will always be best known as the first team to win The Amazing Race, and they did so solidly and likably, if not with a ton of flash. But it was the first season of the show, and early in the golden age of reality TV, so flash wasn't the name of the game. The Amazing Race season 1 felt like a real adventure that Rob and Brennan were genuinely excited about, which made them easy to root for.
The pair were dominant in the second half of the game, earning first place in several of the final legs. Ultimately, the final leg is iconic simply for being a satisfying end to a debut season. There's heartbreak when Frank and Margarita finish second, but it doesn't subtract from the triumph of Rob and Brennan crossing the finish line to greet The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan and hear the cheers of the previously eliminated teams.
