Sisters Katie and Charlotte Schultz found it difficult to watch back their metro mishap in Madrid that led to their elimination on The Amazing Race.
“That was really, really hard to watch,” Charlotte, 20, exclusively told Us on Friday, October 2. “Leaving the tomatoes [road block], we were both so frantic.”
Charlotte added that she and Katie, 26, “weren’t that far behind” Jody Rebhun and Jenn Naso in the race, but being towards the back of the pack added pressure.
“The mindset of being in last, like the panic really set in, and we weren’t prepared for that,” she continued. “We were just so excited to be going anywhere. We were like, ‘Just get us on the metro, going in some direction.’”
During the Thursday, October 1, episode, Katie and Charlotte made a colossal navigation error. The racers were tasked with getting to Puerta del Sol via the metro. However, the train also had a Puerta del Sur stop in the opposite direction.
Multiple teams initially made the same mistake as Katie and Charlotte, but the sisters didn’t catch their error until it was too late. Katie and Charlotte ended up being “close to an hour” behind the other teams.
“It seems like a lot of other teams made that mistake a little bit, but then on the metro they were like, ‘Let’s double check,’ and they made that smart move and double checked and came back,” Charlotte explained. “We did not. We got on the metro, and we were just so stressed. We were just like zoned out. It was terrible.”
Katie added, “It looks like a lot of teams got lost a decent amount in Madrid, whether it was on the metro or on the roads. It was a really hard city to navigate, especially if you don’t speak Spanish. So that made us feel better. I mean, it doesn’t really help that much, but it’s a little better.”
At one point in the show, Charlotte asked Katie if Puerta del Sur and Puerta del Sol were the same thing, but neither one of them double-checked their clue due to exhaustion.
“After being in last and seeing every single other person leave, my whole brain left,” Katie told Us. “There was not a thought in my head. I don’t even remember any of those conversations happening. And then we got home after being eliminated. Charlotte’s like, ‘Yeah, I think I mentioned that,’ and I was like, ‘Yep, I don’t remember that at all.’ I knew that was gonna get aired. I was like, ‘I know that’s gonna hurt to watch.’”
Despite the mix-up, Katie and Charlotte persevered in the race with smiles on their faces. When they finally got to the right spot, they felt relieved when they saw Dafina and Saran Dunmore still working on the Slice of History task. However, as soon as Katie and Charlotte started the challenge, Dafina and Saran completed the task.
“We were solo for so long, and then. We made it to Slice of History. [We] see Dafina and Saran and we were just ecstatic,” Charlotte recalled. “We were so excited to see another team. We’re like, ‘OK, we have hope. There’s someone else out here. Someone else must have struggled like we did because somehow there’s still someone here.’ But we went, and we looked at the boards. We were figuring it out, and Dafina and Saran left. Like they did their final check. They were out of there, so most of the day we were solo.”
The Amazing Race airs on CBS on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET.
