CBS

STUMPED
After placing what she believed to be the correct ten items on the stage, Christina waited for the cluebox to open to confirm her choices, but it didn't. She made a mistake on the first leg in Ireland by using the donkey instead of the bicycle. Next, Rachel took a shot, but she had three incorrect items: the donkey in Ireland, the gas canisters in India instead of the U-turn, and the flowers in Japan instead of the cleaning man. Meanwhile, Nick struggled by having more answers incorrect than correct as he fretted, "It's a million dollars and I can't figure it out."

Eventually, Christina realized her main sticking point was the number of animal or animal by-products on the stage. However, she failed to remember that a human being is an animal and incorrectly kept the donkey from Ireland along with the cleaning man. Frustration began to consume Christina as she continued to rearrange the items, including taking off the gun from Croatia, to make matters worse.

PROBLEM SOLVED!
As Christina reached her wit's end quietly asking help from God, the serene Rachel calmly and methodically tried to fix the problems she created in the puzzle. While she immediately knew the cleaning man was indeed an animal, Rachel couldn't remember ever seeing the pole vault even though she used it in Amsterdam. Once that piece of information came back to her, she realized she had two items from Amsterdam and removed the pole correctly keeping the bike. Rachel's calm attitude throughout the trying and perplexing Road Block paid off as the cluebox opened, allowing her to grab the clue and return to an ecstatic TK. Tearing open the clue, the dating couple read that they had to find "the Cook's eye view of the Sleeping Lady." What they then had to figure out was this clue referred to the statue of famed explorer Captain James Cook.

Jumping into their taxi, an excited TK & Rachel asked their driver where to find the "Cook's eye view" and he incorrectly began driving them up to a hillside where he thought the statue was located. During this time, Christina finally finished the Road Block, apologizing profusely to her understanding father, and the father and daughter sat in their taxi hoping to catch up to the dating couple. However, TK & Rachel's driver eventually realized his mistake and got the nervous pair to Cook's statue ahead of Ron & Christina. At the statue, TK & Rachel learned they had to travel on foot to downtown Anchorage to find the statue of the salmon hooker.

With Ron & Christina still on their heels, TK & Rachel ran through the streets of Anchorage asking people who tried to direct them to the salmon hooker. After using a couple of locals for directions, the pair found the brightly painted fish with the final clue of the race, telling them to take a taxi to Girdwood Airport and to the Finish Line.

THE WINNERS
As the previous eight Teams stood cheering alongside Phil with the gorgeous green background of Alaskan mountains behind them, dating couple TK & Rachel stepped onto the mat to be named the winners of THE AMAZING RACE 12 and the one million dollar prize. On his partner, TK remarked, "I'm incredibly proud of Rachel. She is petite, but she still went out and beat a hell of a lot of very competitive people. It's just a testament to how tough she actually is."

After a hard fought battle, father and daughter Ron & Christina not only took home a second place finish, but a mended relationship as well. Ron commented, "I feel real grateful that even though I didn't come up with the first place, I come up with first place in my daughter's heart and the fact that I changed for the better." Christina added, "My dad and I have a strong friendship now. You can't buy that. I'm so happy to be here with him."

Arriving in third place with the grandfather by his side, Nick said, "Aside from winning, my main goal was just to come here, be on the mat, and race around the world and have a great time with my grandfather. I got everything I wanted from it and more." Don added, "I always said that I could do this competition, but now I had to a chance to prove it."

One half of the newly crowned winners, Rachel commented on her partner. "My feelings for TK are very real. He's my best friend. He's my rock and he's just my favorite person and I got to do all this with him." On how they ran the Race, TK noted, "Being able to do the entire race, not compromising our relationship in any way and in the process making great friendships just makes winning it that much sweeter. Nice guys can definitely finish first and I think we proved it with this."

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3