Local ‘Amazing Race’ duos prepare for trip of a lifetime
BY LORI RACKL TV Critic/lrackl@suntimes.com September 23, 2011 8:16PM
Engaged couple Ernie Halvorsen and Cindy Chiang of Chicago looked at their work to get ready for “The Amazing Race” as “good pre-marriage counseling.”
‘Race’ winner back on TV
Chicago native Jennifer Hoffman returns to television Sunday as a volleyball analyst for the college sports network ESPNU. Hoffman, who won last season’s “Amazing Race” along with her sister Kisha, was a standout athlete at Seton Academy in South Holland. She went on to play and coach volleyball at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. She’ll call her first match alongside play-by-play announcer Anne Marie Anderson when Villanova takes on Notre Dame at noon Sunday.
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Updated: November 10, 2011 5:55PM
Lots of people run along the city’s lakefront path; not many do it while wearing a heavy backpack.
Wrigleyville resident Ernie Halvorsen did that — and a lot more — in preparation for the “The Amazing Race,” which kicks off its 19th season at 7 p.m. Sunday on WBBM-Channel 2.
Halvorsen, 29, and his fiancee, Cindy Chiang, 30, are one of two local teams battling it out for this season’s $1 million prize.
Twin sisters Liz and Marie Canavan, 24, of Deerfield also are among the 11 pairs of contestants on a 40,000-mile sprint through 20 cities on four continents. Their competition includes a pair of Olympic snowboarders, the youngest person to sail solo around the world, retired NFL player Marcus Pollard and “Survivor” champs Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca.
Teams have to contend with jet lag, bad cab drivers, language barriers and culture shock as they go head-to-head in a series of physical and mental challenges across the globe. The eight-time Emmy Award-winning series heads to uncharted territory this season, making first-time visits to Indonesia, Malawi, Belgium and Denmark.
The last team to cross the finish line each week runs the risk of being booted from the race. At the end, only one team walks away with a fat check.
Sound exhausting? It is, which is why Halvorsen, a construction project manager, trained with that weighty backpack.
He and Chiang, a brand manager at Kraft Foods, tried to prepare for anything the race might throw at them. Their training regimen included kayaking on the Chicago River, scaling the rock climbing wall at Lakeshore Athletic Club and hitting the batting cages.
“I also took her roller-blading with a hockey stick,” said Halvorsen, a Jefferson Park native whose dad is a Chicago homicide detective. “I figured if we got up to Russia or something, she’d better learn how to hit a slap shot.”
Chiang and Halvorsen have extremely different traveling styles. She’s a planner who puts together Excel spreadsheets plotting out their every vacation move. Halvorsen is more of a free spirit.
“We did tons of communication exercises and team-building exercises so Ernie and I could know what types of arguments we might get into and keep them at bay,” Chiang said.
They sat back to back on their living room floor with a set of LEGOs, while Chiang read the directions and Halvorsen tried to build something based on what she said. And they watched every episode of the last 18 seasons, scrutinizing the shows’ “roadblocks” and “detours” to determine which one of them is best suited to take on which tasks.
The Canavan twins also studied the series’ prior seasons — especially the last one, where Chicago natives and sisters Jennifer and Kisha Hoffman clinched the prize.
The Canavan sisters decided to try out for the show after their father died of a heart attack in December, around the same time they graduated from the University of Kentucky. The identical twins say they love a good adventure, and the race seemed like an ideal opportunity to have some fun while seeing the world.
They, too, prepared by running around town with heavy backpacks, as well as working on their orienteering skills.
“We studied maps and took a class at REI on how to read a compass,” said Marie, who works at a baby clothing boutique in Lake Forest.
“We went up to Wisconsin and took a map and tried to direct ourselves to different places,” added Liz, a marketing assistant at Great American Group in Deerfield.
Despite growing up in the same house and living together through college, the race still taught the siblings new things about each other.
“I didn’t realize she was such a head case,” said Liz, laughing.
Chiang and Halvorsen also found the experience eye-opening.
“It was really good pre-marriage counseling,” Chiang said.
The couple is planning a March wedding, followed by a honeymoon, which they hope will be more relaxing than their last trip.
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