‘Amazing Race’ cowboys battle to third place in fifth leg
Ted Harbin

            For the first time of this season’s “The Amazing Race,” brothers Jet and Cord McCoy hat to put aside their cowboy hats and boots.

            It was just part of the process for the eight remaining teams on the fifth leg of the race, which began with the teams commuting from Hamburg, Germany, to a location in France. In all, the cowboys snacked on a bauget, crawled through a war zone in World War I uniforms, then pedaled a couple of miles on century-old bicycles while dressed in early 1900s French clothing. They managed to finish the fifth leg of the race in third place, a step up from the week before.

            Still, the McCoys tackled every challenge with their trademark smiles and quipping personalities.

            Starting in fourth position, the cowboys made their way to the French town of Sainte Menehould, where they found their next clue in a fresh bauget. They were directed to drive to La Mains de Massiges, where they took a step back in time.

            In fact, it was where they dressed as World War I American soldiers and decided to crawl under barbed wire while biplanes flew within feet of the ground and characters fired fake bullets and reenactment “bombs” exploded around them.

            “It was pretty real for a detour,” Cord McCoy said, referring to the war reenactment.

The alternative was to translate a Morse code message, which none of the teams originally chose. But after working through the crawl, the husband/wife team of Joe and Heidi Wang were hit with a U-turn, set by them by the race leaders, Louie and Michael Naylor, the detective brothers. That meant the Wangs had to return to the detour, which Joe Wang limped through on an injured knee.

Instead of returning to the crawl, the Wangs decided on the translation and never advanced with the accurate message. They were eliminated from the contest, leaving the other seven teams.

The McCoys actually dropped as low as sixth place, but their hard-charging style helped them run past the lesbian couple of Carol Rosenfeld and Brandy Snow and the brother tandem of Dan and Jordan Pious, all while donning their 1917-style fatigues. The cowboys then rode their early 1900s bicycles to the final stop of the leg, finishing behind the Naylors and the father-daughter team of Steve and Allie Smith.

“That’s why I like horses better than bikes,” Jet McCoy said during the final stretch run of the day. “You don’t have to pedal a horse.”

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