Exclusive: Eric Guiffreda talks 'The Amazing Race' (Part 2)

Eric Guiffreda and Daniel Guiffreda were ousted from The Amazing Race after a Super Leg featuring a Partner-Swap twist and Double U-Turn during the latest two-hour episode on CBS.


The "Twin Brothers and Firefighters" became the sixth team eliminated from the around-the-world competition after arriving at the seventh leg's Pit Stop in Harare, Zimbabwe, in last place.

Eric and Daniel admitted their demise in the Race was singing and dancing, as not having rhythm led to having the blues.

During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Eric talked about his The Amazing Race experience. (His brother, Daniel, unfortunately could not participate in the phone call because he currently has military duties).

Below is the concluding portion of what Eric had to say.


Reality TV World: What did you think of Evan and your brother Daniel's decision to shoot down Jessica Graf and Kristi Leskinen's request for help at the Detour challenge when they looked for evidence along the trail on horseback?

Eric Guiffreda: Evan was strategically not going along with it for the memory challenge because they just got there, and if they helped them, they would've given [Jessica and Kristi] the last two, and then they would have beaten them. So there are some times when you're not just going to shoot yourself in the foot, you know?

Reality TV World: Your team seemed to have a lot of car trouble this season. In addition to getting stuck in the mud in the last episode, you had to physically push your car around in a previous leg. Do you guys know how to drive a manual transmission? What was the issue?

Eric Guiffreda: Well, we definitely both have had manual transmissions for over 10 years. We grew up with them... The only problem we had the whole time -- and I should've made a post on this to explain it more to everybody -- but when Daniel was driving, it showed us in reverse.

They always have manuals, but to go in reverse, when you go and shift it in, it would just go forward. We didn't know that you had to pick it up and drop it in, because we've never had that.


None of our vehicles ever did that; you just shift and go straight in reverse. But this one, you had to pick it up and drop it into gear. And that was like nothing we had ever tried or done, or anything like that.

We just simply didn't know until after that leg. (Laughs) But every time you saw us getting into trouble, it was us pushing it backwards, because we didn't know how to do it in reverse.

And the mud last night, you read the clue and it says, "Go restock the water for the rangers," or whatever, but that wasn't really the true intention of the [task]. The whole intention of that was for you to get stuck and have to get out for the most part, because you weren't allowed to go above a certain speed.

I had a four-by-four and we go hunting and do all of that, so I knew for sure I would've gotten through it, but when you can only go five or 10 miles per hour and the car is already stuck in the shallow part, there was no way of physically getting through that at that speed. If we could do what we wanted to do, it would've been a breeze.

Reality TV World: If you had first pick for the "Partner Swap" like Cody Nickson and Jessica did, which team would have been your top choice to work with, and why?


Eric Guiffreda: Henry and Evan, we definitely loved working with them, but if we had to pick, we probably would've picked an all-male team. Knowing whatever was coming, we had a big feeling that it was going to be physical, so that would be helpful.

So I think we probably would've picked Indy [Alex Rossi and Conor Daly], but I don't want Henry and Evan to think we didn't want to work with them. We loved working with them and I was very pleased we got a chance to work with them. But just from a physical standpoint, I think having an all-male team was helpful.

Reality TV World: Daniel's son was born about 12 hours before you had to leave for The Amazing Race, is that right?

Eric Guiffreda: Yeah, actually I called him and we were supposed to leave that next morning around 7AM, and I was like, "Well let me check and make sure we've got everything," right around 4PM.

And at that point, he was like, "We're at the hospital! The baby is coming." So the baby was born shortly afterward, at like 6 or 7PM, and we left the next morning at 7. He came right from the hospital.


Reality TV World: Wow. Do you think Daniel's newborn motivated him throughout the Race or do you think it made what is already a very hard and stressful journey even more difficult and challenging given he had to be away from home?

Eric Guiffreda: I think a combination of both. It definitely motivated him to want to do even better, but the emotional side definitely made it even harder because he only got to hold him one time before he had to leave. And on top of that, he had to leave his wife and the other kids that he has in that situation, so that was really tough.

Reality TV World: But your family was still supportive of Daniel's The Amazing Race stint, right?

Eric Guiffreda: Oh big time, yeah. We had overwhelming support from both sets of parents, and my wife was there whenever [Daniel's wife] needed her. And my sister. We come from a family of six, so we have three sisters who could help my sister-in-law.

Reality TV World: Being twins, did you guys have similar strengths and weaknesses going into the Race when it comes to your physical and mental capabilities, or different? And when confronted with a Roadblock task, how did you choose which brother should attempt it?


Eric Guiffreda: Looking back, I'm seeing now and it's plain [as day] that our biggest strength was our biggest weakness, and that's that we are so much the same.

Physically, we are very very similar, you know, any kind of training mentally, everything we've done has always been together. We're almost exactly alike. So that was a huge help in the things that we were good at.

But in the things that we weren't, that really was a crippling thing to us. We felt that was our biggest weakness because we didn't have too much of a different perspective on things.

Like with Lucas Bocanegra and Brittany Austin, or Cody and Jessica -- the male and female teams -- the ladies always have a 100 percent different perspective than we do, and it's very helpful.

Me and Daniel just went in there and it was like the same person looking at it, but when you can bring somebody else in there and looking at it from a different experience, I think that was a huge help. So I think it was a weakness in one way but very helpful if we were good at it.

But going into the Roadblocks, since we were so much the same, all we did was alternate. So whoever did the last one, the other person did the next. So we didn't have any [strategy] going into that.


Reality TV World: At the time you left the Race, were you rooting for a particular team to win?

Eric Guiffreda: Not really because we were on good terms and we were friends with everybody that was still in it. So we were more neutral on that. We maybe had a preference on a few things, but I never want to tell anybody what they are (laughs) because I don't want people to get their feelings hurt, you know?

We had a little bit of a preference based on other factors, not really on the people themselves.

One thing is, like, "Team Ocean Rescue" [Lucas and Brittany], they come from a department of their Fire Department in Miami, and we're in the Fire Department. So it would be kind of cool to see them do well, but we were not wanting anybody to win.

Reality TV World: How were you two cast on The Amazing Race? How did you end up on this season of the show?

Eric Guiffreda: We applied. We put in one time and then redid it, you know, in 2015 we did it. But I don't think we had a good video. So my younger brother helped us put something together. He's more into that kind of stuff. And so we put it in, sent a video with an application, and 14 months later they called us!


To read the first half of Reality TV World's exclusive The Amazing Race interview with Eric Guiffreda, click here.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski