'The Amazing Race 34's' Marcus and Michael Craig Reveal a "Loose Alliance" with Emily and Molly

The military brothers also reveal how their dynamic sometimes led to costly mistakes on the race.

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Marcus and Michael Craig put more pressure on themselves than a self-sustaining arch of bricks. The brothers were looking to execute every leg and task with military-like precision. But their race was anything but, leading to a surprising amount of up and down finishes for the perceived frontrunners. And unfortunately for them, a costly error at a Picasso-theme Roadblock painted them into a corner, eliminating them during the second "Megaleg" of the season in Spain.

Marcus and Michael were perhaps the most well-traveled out of all the teams this season, considering their international experiences throughout their respective deployments. As such, they gained a reputation for sterling navigational skills. But those didn't appear in the first leg, as the guys got off to a hot lead before getting lost in Munich had them scrambling all the way down to seventh. But they used their initial struggles as a learning opportunity, and quickly rebounded when they crossed the border into Austria. They rang the bells of victory when they immediately went up to first place. And they would hold their position at the front of the pack for a couple of legs, their momentum kept up by their navigation combined with smart and efficient thinking behind the various tasks.

Unfortunately, their position at the top of the platoon was only temporary. In the back half of the season, Marcus and Michael would make small, yet costly mistakes that would greatly affect their position as the race tightened. Too much attention to detail in Jordan put them in fifth. One wrong turn in France put them in fourth. And it was yet another brief, yet eventful error that ultimately cost them the race. Starting the second Megaleg in the last group, Marcus eagerly took a puzzle Roadblock to recreate a Picasso painting. But one elusive panel stumped him, as time and teams went by. When he finally finished, they turned on the afterburners in their "C.A.R." to try to catch fellow sibling team Emily Bushnell and Molly Sinert. Unfortunately, the mistake at the very beginning of the Megaleg led to their elimination at the end of it.

Now out of the race--and with Michael unable to join the interview--Marcus talks with Parade.com about when defeat set in on the Megaleg, how they saw the small mistakes that cost them winning every leg, and what he learned about his brother racing together.

Related: Everything to Know About The Amazing Race 34

Let me start by asking how your Thanksgiving was, considering your team was such a family affair. Did it help to see loved ones after watching your elimination the day before?
Everything was good this past weekend. It was actually the first time that Michael and I right, along with other family members, we saw each other since the race concluded.

Wow, a long time coming! You guys talked on the race about not spending a lot of time together due to your respective jobs. So what made you decide to apply for the race?
So actually, I've been a fan of the show since its inception. The Abbys of the world get the moniker of "superfan." I think I'm a super fan. Multiple seasons I've watched three, four, or five times. Anyway, our careers being what they are, we never thought it was possible that we could even be cast. From the job perspective, would they let us go? We just told no to ourselves.

December of 2020, we were together for the Christmas holiday, watching an old season on some platform. And there are a couple of tequilas or bourbons in us. (Laughs.) We're like, "You know what? We're here now. I'm sure they're not airing because of COVID. But right now, let's just send the application audition tape in and see what happens." We did a whole Bad Boys thing. Marcus and Michael, tall and short. We finished in December 2020. And then we just sent it and forgot about it. And January of this year, we received a call saying, "We want you guys on the race." And I guess, according to the other contestants, we were one of the first calls that production made as they were getting ready to cast with 34. 

So being that you were a superfan, was there any special prep you did before the show? Or did you feel that your international travel and navigational skills from your job were enough?
No, we didn't do any Amazing Race-specific training. But that wasn't because we didn't want to. We just weren't together. And so I guess the only preparation we could do was we could talk about different things. We gave ourselves a set of rules. That acronym that Michael gave in Petra was his own acronym. If he would have shared it with me before I would have tweaked it a little bit. (Laughs.) But in the meantime, like the month and a half leading up to us leaving for the show. I was actually in the field doing army tank things. Wow.Shooting tanks, not sleeping. And so that concluded on a Friday. On Wednesday, I was on a plane for Amazing Race. And Michael's current position as a fighter pilot, he's an instructor. And so his schedule is pretty arduous in terms of training other people to actually be pilots. So there was no preparation in that way.

You start the race and seem to get off into a fast lead. But from our perspective you struggle navigating, which makes you fall all the way to seventh. How much did that first leg make you evaluate the rest of your race?
The navigating was more in Toulouse. In Germany, it was a little different. The edit shows that we're lost. We weren't lost. We went on the show with an understanding this race was going to be the back half of 33. There are going to be group starts where you finish in terms of place. Even if you finish four hours behind the team, you only might start 15 minutes behind them. So with that in mind, we took risks in navigating.

So in Munich, after we finished Smash and we're headed to Saw, the traffic was brutal. I think everybody will attest to that. There was a park that ran adjacent to one of the roads. This park led directly to the beer garden where Saw was. I said, "Michael, let's follow the bus and take the park. It'd be a direct route." We get to the park; police are there, we can't drive. And so that got us turned around. They're yelling at us in German. (Laughs.) And so that really did us in. But for us, it was a risk because we wanted to get first, and we thought this might be the key. But it didn't work out. So it's more of a bad decision than we didn't know where we were going.

Let's jump from the beginning of your race to the end. It seemed from our perspective that you basically lost the Megaleg in that very first Roadblock. Did you get the same sense as you kept racing through Spain?
We go into the second half of the Megaleg. When we arrived in Ronda is when we really felt, "Yeah, that's probably it for us." And that was just because once we got to Ronda, everybody had to find the tour guide for your next clue. But as soon as we stepped out of the car, we saw the yellow Amazing Race clues on a woodcarver's workshop area. And so we ran to him. And we were told, "This clue is not for you." And we're like, "Oh, this is the clue after the Detour. And there's only one clue left." So, everybody already completed the Detour

We actually saw Molly and Emily conducting the tightrope walk. So when we ran over and got the Detour clue, we realized the tightrope was neither one of these things and they're conducting the Roadblock. So that was pretty much it for us. But back in Malaga, I was devastated. We kept times of everything. We left about 45 minutes after Molly and Emily from Picasso. And a  slight glimmer of hope when we saw them cooking the fish. We made up small amount of ground; we probably made about 15 minutes there. But not nearly enough.

The Picasso Roadblock was only the most recent time we saw you two fall in placement due to just one small mistake. What was it like mentally to reconcile all those times you had leads squandered due to those errors?
It didn't diminish us. (Sighs.) This is gonna sound bad when it gets aired. We thought, with other teams, some of their first place finishes were more of luck or more of us doing something poorly. If we go, "You race your best and I'll race my best," Michael and I win. So we didn't see any other teams wins as them really dominating this leg. Well, we saw it more as, "If we don't mess up, we win." And so we just told ourselves, "Well, let's stop making mistakes." (Laughs.)

You mentioned Emily and Molly. Since the first Megaleg, the four of you always seemed to be around each other in terms of placements. Was there any sort of sibling rivalry going on?
No, it wasn't a rivalry. It was more of a loose alliance. There are no U-Turns this season. And a lot of teams were conspiring, "Well, if there's no U-Turn, how can we get the brothers out of this race?" And so Molly and Emily heard these conversations, and they came back to us and told us, "This is what other teams are saying." Different things that we've done successfully, I think they wanted to attach to that. And we wanted to attach to them because they seemed more down to earth and level-headed and not super excited all the time. Really sharp and focused on whatever tasks they were given.

And so a lot of those times, like in Petra, we talked right before the cameras started rolling, "Let's work together, let's get first and second again." We're running through Amman. They were like, "Hey, let's run together. "So that was all planned. We ran through Amman all together up until we got to the Detour. And that continued throughout. When we were in Domme, we worked together, like, "Let's find the castle on a map." We drove there together. In that time frame, we passed a couple of teams; we left in the third group that day. So it was us working together. It was more of a more of alliance until the task, and then you're on your own. But let's help each other get there first.

Well, let's finish by talking about your own sibling. As you mentioned, you and Michael live such separate lives. What's one thing you learned about him racing around the world together?
It's gonna sound really weird, because he's a fighter pilot. And in my own perspective, he's the top 1% of 1% of 1% of what our country has to offer. Having said that, I recognized more and more during the show how capable he is. However, I think our relationship and dynamic me being an older brother, I think it played an effect sometimes. I'm eight years older. Mike was in grade school, and I'm coaching him in sports. Michael was 12, I taught him how to drive stick. I taught him how to ride a motorcycle when he was 13 years old. I trained him to be a track superstar. It was always like mentor/mentee, coach/player, or just older brother/younger brother. And I think I recognized that sooner than he did.

So a lot of times I was trying to make an effort to defer to Michael, "What do you want to do?" Because I recognize if I say, "This is what we're doing," he's just gonna say, "Okay." And so as we're driving to Toulouse, he said he wanted to make the right and I want to make a left on a different highway. And I gave him my reasons; I didn't use any common sense. And then I was like, "What do you want to do?" And he was like, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I think, if we were seeing each other more as equals, I would have liked him to be more assertive with me. "No, Marcus, let's go right." Or, "No, Marcus, slow down on the saw." And so sometimes I felt like he didn't want to challenge me. But I wanted him to, and I think that part of the relationship could still be developed.

Next, read our interview with Quinton Peron and Mattie Lynch, who were eliminated in The Amazing Race 34 Episode 8.