‘The Amazing Race’s’ Rod and Leticia on their finale woes: ‘We find joy in the struggles’

Joyce Eng
·3 min read

Rod and Leticia Gardner entered the final leg on “The Amazing Race 36” on a high. They had won the penultimate leg after Leticia crushed the windsurfing Roadblock and things were going well on the last leg in Philadelphia — until they got to Betsy Ross House. Each team member had to memorize and recite sections of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, and Rod struggled. A lot.

“He never wants to look at it again,” Leticia quips to Gold Derby (watch above).

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“I was like, man, this is one thing that doesn’t play to my strengths,” Rod says. “I could not remember that Declaration to save my life.”

The former NFL wide receiver doesn’t recall how many attempts he made, but they were there for a long time — long enough for Juan and Shane, who took an accidental detour to New Jersey to catch up. “We wanted our boys to catch up to us. I just wanted to see my guys. I missed them,” Rod jokes. “It was just one word and old terms. I couldn’t get it right. I didn’t know the form or whatever it was. It would be one word I’d keep messing up on. And it was driving me crazy.”

SEE ‘The Amazing Race’s’ Juan and Shane explain how they wound up in New Jersey

“There were a couple sentences you messed up on too,” Leticia adds. “I think memory for him just isn’t his [strong suit]. I was reading his lines at one point, like, ‘C’mon, man.’ But I just think the memory thing just doesn’t play to our strengths.”

The couple was still feeling good after leaving the task, knowing the pilots were still behind them. They were hoping for a task that would allow them to make up ground on Ricky and Cesar, but unfortunately, Leticia got tripped up at the flag Roadblock, overlooking the six-pointed stars among the five-pointed ones, and Juan passed her. “I just figured that the stars were all five points and I’d get most of them,” she explains. “But there’d be some that were in the pack that actually had six points, and I realized, ‘Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I kept missing that.'”

“It was one struggle after another. That’s why I told them if they let us back on the race, they gonna have a problem,” Rod adds. “We find joy in the struggles. Even watching the last day, we probably had more fun in the car going to the Pit Stop because we had our struggles so bad. It was just broad sweat. It is over, but that was hilarious.”

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