Exclusive: Lucas Bocanegra and Brittany Austin talk 'The Amazing Race' (Part 1)

Lucas Bocanegra and Brittany Austin were eliminated from The Amazing Race due to a missing passport during Wednesday night's two-hour episode on CBS.


The "Newly-Engaged Couple and Lifeguards" became the seventh team ousted from the around-the-world competition after arriving in the Kingdom of Bahrain -- a Middle Eastern country never visited on The Amazing Race -- in last place.

The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan did not force the pair to complete any of the leg's tasks since they were so far behind. By the time the couple managed to obtain a temporary passport and travel to Bahrain, they were hours behind the other teams.

Lucas felt he had let down his family, friends and Brittany, but his new fiancee said she couldn't have asked for a better partner in the Race.

During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Lucas and Brittany talked about their time on The Amazing Race, including the heartbreaking passport incident. Below is the first half of what they had to say.


Reality TV World: Do you have any idea how far behind the fourth-place team you were once you finally met Phil in Bahrain and got eliminated? What was the time gap?

Brittany Austin: Well, we didn't arrive until 12 hours later. Just arrival time. They left at 7:30 in the morning, it was probably an hour flight. And we didn't get there until close to 7PM. So yeah, (laughs) it was a lot longer than it seemed.

Reality TV World: So I'm wondering how much of that time was lost only because of the missing passport or if there was a delay or something. What time did your flight from Dubai actually leave?

Brittany Austin: Probably like 5PM or so, I guess.

Lucas Bocanegra: Right, our arrival time wasn't until, like, 6:30-7PM.


Reality TV World: Once you received the temporary passport, how did you guys remain so optimistic under the circumstances you just described? Was there a part of you that just wanted to give up?

Lucas Bocanegra: Well you always have to meet [host Phil Keoghan]. You always have to figure out if you're out of the Race, so I know in hindsight we felt pretty defeated several times on the Race when we were in the back part of the pack.

Brittany Austin: In the first leg.

Lucas Bocanegra: But you start to realize that people do get lost and there are non-elimination legs.

Brittany Austin: You never know what's going to happen! 


Lucas Bocanegra: There might be a situation where you could be able to continue to race, but it was really out of our hands. We really couldn't do anything. It's not like we messed up on a challenge and couldn't figure it out. It was basically just I lost my passport and we had to get another one somehow, and there's just nothing you can do.

Brittany Austin: You have no option other than to power through it and vocalize your hope. Maybe the more you say it, the more it might actually come into play. Unfortunately, we just didn't have that kind of luck.

Reality TV World: Lucas, was your original passport ever found? You were convinced you left it on the flight coming into Dubai, right?

Lucas Bocanegra: Right. So we had a connection flight from Harare. We flew to another location, and then there was a connection flight to Dubai. Everybody almost missed the connection flight because there was a delayed flight and there were some other issues on the plane.

So we all ran to get to our seats for that flight into Dubai, and I put it down on the seat and I sat there. I was never able to find it, but I know it's on that plane. There's nowhere else it could be because I had to show my passport to actually get on that flight.


And then all we did was get off that flight and walk to the counter to try to get our boarding tickets to Bahrain. So, I know it was on the plane, but they just wouldn't let me go back on the plane.

Regulations won't allow you to get back on the boarding plane that's boarding for another location. So I know it's on the plane and it's probably still behind that seat.

Brittany Austin: I don't think they were very motivated to look for it either. In those flights there were a couple things -- there was a dirty diaper from a previous flight in the seat that I sat! (Laughs) So I don't think that they [searched] through it thoroughly... I think that was part of the issue.

I really wish I had been there to try to sweet-talk the guy into letting me back on the plane or something, you know, and that I had done a little bit more. But at the end of the day, they have rules and regulations that once you're off the flight in Dubai, you're not allowed to board again.

Reality TV World: That's frustrating.


Brittany Austin: Very much so!

Reality TV World: A storyline that played out this season was tension between Brittany and Jessica Graf. Brittany, what was your reaction when you found out Jessica was hoping you wouldn't find your Travelocity gnome she had put on the floor in the phone booth in Morocco?

Brittany Austin: You know, it's funny, because when you're in the heat of the moment in the race, the way things happen in your mind are very different from maybe what had happened. Because I didn't ask her to take my gnome. In the moment, I assumed she had taken it on purpose.

After the whole thing panned out and after watching it and after kind of understanding the heat of the moment, I don't think she intentionally took my gnome with the thought of hiding it.

I think I was very distracted (laughs), and since I didn't have it in my hands and didn't see it, for some reason, I ran off without it. And I take full responsibility for that, unfortunately.

I think her not admitting to me that I had totally forget my gnome was just part of the game. And had the roles been reversed, if she had left her gnome on her own, I wouldn't have told her either.


It's just part of the game, and we were in the back of the pack. So what I feel now is very different from how I felt in the heat of the moment and on the Race.

Reality TV World: When feeling vulnerable, Jessica has done a couple sneaky things. And she and Cody Nickson also U-Turned Trevor Wadleigh and Chris Marchant. But in last week's episode, we saw Jessica getting angry at you for the U-Turn and also at [Evan Lynyak] for not helping her with a Detour. So do you think Jessica was being a little hypocritical or that her frustrations were justified?

Brittany Austin: You know, she got frustrated in the Race; we all got frustrated in the Race. We were sleep deprived and you're racing for a lot of money, and you've got a lot of things going through your head.

And I think everybody reacts differently, and I think everybody does the first thing that comes to their head. And I can't fault her for her reactions. I'm not saying I would react the same way, but I can't fault her for her reaction under stress.

Be sure to check back with Reality TV World soon for more from our exclusive The Amazing Race interview with Lucas and Brittany.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski