Looks like Amazing Race curtains for Ashley and Matt

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 26, episode 10 preview

Namibia/Amsterdam – It’s crunch time on the Race, as after tonight (May 1) there are only two episodes left.

GoldDerby

Odds are that Ashley and Matt, the couple who got engaged in an earlier episode, will be saying goodbyet. 

I've got science on my side in saying that. In a gold derby.com poll, 43 percent of the respondents predicted the heave-ho for A & M.

You’ve got to believe that Matt’s frantic and disastrous performance in the Episode 9 wooden shoe challenge is behind the public’s lack of faith in him and Ashley.

It was painful to watch, as Matt, running and talking but not thinking, tried to find a match for a wooden shoe among hundreds of wooden shoes.

Matt matching shoes

He succeeded on the 43^rd try. Time by that time, had flown.

If they had been eliminated, they were, by their own admission, going to go right out there and procreate.

Ashley put that process on hold, saying they will focus on the race. Host Phil Keoghan, who thinks of little else but love and matchmaking, did not comment.

Next most likely to go are truck stop lovers Rochelle and Mike, as 29 percent of those voting believe they are goners.  

True to the pattern they’ve established, they did just well enough to survive in Episode 9, finishing fourth.

Rochelle, to her credit, proved adept at Dutch Masters shuffleboard. All she needed was a beer, she said, to make the moment complete. You gotta like her.

Rochelle shuffles with Dutch Masters

Who likes Jealani and Jenny, lawyers not in love? Poll participants have them as the third-most likely team to be eliminated (15 percent say they will go.)

I suspect that most Race watchers don’t really care all that much about or for J & J. And they don’t particularly like or dislike each other, so they’re not all that much fun to watch.

The bickering Blair and Hayley are quite the opposite; they’re fun, fun, fun. For better or for worse, they remain a reason to watch the show, which has to be why only 5 percent of the voters think they will be eliminated tonight.

And maybe we should give the nagging and nasal Hayley some love. Yes, she can't even put a 

Hayley and Blair in the hot tub

bike helmet on straight, but she did crack a challenge that tested the Racers' math and logic skills.

Laura and Tyler won Episode 9, just as they won Episode 8. They’re making the whole thing look easy. No one – repeat no one – taking the poll believes they will be eliminated.

Which means, of course, that they will go out tonight in an episode won easily by a newly focused, calm and celibate Ashley and Matt. We’ll see.

Overheard:

Hayley: (to Blair): Get out of this dream…you’re excused from my dream right now.

Jenny: Oh my god, a windmill,

Hayley: Oh that smell; it smells like poop.

Ashley: The longer we’re here the worse it gets.

Tyler: I never thought I would be sitting in my underwear,

Laura: You’re not paying attention. You’re too busy staring at your muscles.

Matt: Note to self: try to calm down.

Hayley: We can’t keep riding around in the wrong direction.

Blair:  Hayley, you’re not thinking, you’re screaming,

Hayley: I told you we should go down this street.

Phil (to Laura and Tyler):  I would assume that you guys are madly in love right now.

Tyler: We share such a love for the Amazing Race; so that has overpowered anything else.

Matt: We’ve got stories to tell our kids when we have them; which is going to be soon.

Ashley: We/re not having babies yet.

Order of finish, Episode 9

1) Laura and Tyler

2) Hayley and Blair

3) Jenny and Jelani

4) Mike and Rochelle

5) Matt and Ashley