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Continuing the romance theme of the season, Share forces teammates to feed one another a full bowl of noodles. Apparently, the noodles are scalding hot to the point that a fan is placed right beside the bowls to provide some cooling. In reality, the fan is there to push the noodles around, enhancing the difficulty of the Lady and the Tramp riff. Also, the only utensils are chopsticks, a less than ideal delivery system for noodles.

After several awkward moments, Laura & Tyler successfully manage to carb-load. Unfortunately, their taxi driver abandons them, allowing Jenny & Jelani to catch them. The legal team capitalizes to finish in first place once again. Of course, the situation could be much, much worse, Laura & Tyler. Remember Libby & CJ? They have just opened their first clue in Nagano. They are approximately eight days behind the full o’ noodles crew.

The first team to try Chair is, fittingly, the Olympians. Aly the short track speed racer spends most of her days on the ice. This challenge requires her to push her partner’s chair around a…short track speed rink for a full lap. This marks consecutive seasons when a professional athlete is asked to perform a task related to their sport. Last time, it was surfing by a surfer. This time, it’s skating by a skater. We don’t even have a punchline for this. It’s just grossly unfair.

During Chair, each partner must push the other, which only reinforces the gap between Aly & Steve and everybody else. Steve, a bobsledder by trade, pushes heavy objects as a crucial part of his craft. Together, they are able to finish 24 seconds ahead of the deadline on their very first try. We presume the next challenge will ask Aly & Steve to name members of Aly & Steve’s families.

In a cruel twist of fate for the other teams, pampered pop singer Jonathan and his partner, Harley, win the Date Night prize. This is the equivalent of handing Bill Gates 50 bucks. We presume the New Kids on the Block travel in a luxury RV complete with top floor hot spring. Smithers, have the Rolling Stones killed.

The various teams in the middle of the pack eventually complete the puzzle. The editing attempts to persuade us that Libby and CJ are not screwed. Alas, we cannot help but notice that no other teams are there when Libby solves the puzzle. We were too generous at 10 percent. It’s not even five. Meanwhile, the Olympians become the third team to reach the Pit Stop. Aly confides that she wanted to become an ice skater after watching the Nagano Olympics. The opportunity to skate on that track during The Amazing Race was a dream come true for her, which is pretty cool. Well, it’s cool for her, not the other teams. Right on cue, they show other teams failing to complete the task in under the allotted 3:55. It sucks to not be an Olympian.

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