'The Amazing Race' team Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness crowned Season 33 winners

The Amazing Race featured "Internet Personalities" Kim Holderness and Penn Holderness crossing the finish line in Los Angeles, CA, in first place and winning $1 million during the Season 33 finale that aired Wednesday night on CBS.


Kim and Penn defeated the runner-up team, "Flight Attendants" Raquel Moore and Cayla Platt, as well as the third-place finishers "Best Friends" Ryan Ferguson and Dusty Harris during the two-hour finale broadcast.

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"Kim and Penn, seven countries, 17 cities, and having traveled across the globe, I am pleased to tell you that you are the official winners of The Amazing Race! Congratulations!" The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan told the team.

"Father and Daughter" Arun Kumar and Natalia Kumar placed fourth in the penultimate leg.


The Amazing Race finale broadcast began in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The Final 4 teams were tasked with taking a charter flight over 1,700 miles to Lisbon, Portugal, the western most country in Europe.

They started the penultimate leg of the Race at the famed Jesus statue in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Raquel and Rachel departed in the first group at 8:30AM, and they were instructed to drive themselves to Fortaleza de Sao Filipe, which was strategically built to protect the coastline. The teams had to use this vantage point to look for their next set of clues below.

Kim and Penn then left in group two, along with Arun and Natalia, at 8:45AM.


Ryan and Dusty left in the third group at 9AM, and the teams were warned there were going to be two Roadblocks in this leg and so they needed to choose who would do them wisely.

From the top of the fort, Kim and Penn saw a yellow and red flag below and realized they must head to the nearby destination. Raquel and Cayla spotted the flag in second place, with Ryan and Dusty right on their heels. Arun and Natalia were therefore racing in fourth place.

Once at the flag, Kim and Penn -- who arrived in first place -- were told one Racer must choose a boat with the name of an explorer and then row it to the other side of the marina. If the Racer had chosen correctly, a local fisherman would hand a team its next clue.

Kim opted to take on this task as well as Raquel in second place, Arun in third place, and Ryan in fourth place.

Kim finished the Roadblock on her first attempt and she called it "a lucky guess." The team proceeded to Mercearia.


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Raquel also completed the task on her first try, but Arun struggled to row and move his boat at all.

"I don't think rowing is my dad's thing... I should've done this," Natalia noted.

Ryan was able to pass Arun quickly with his expert-level paddling, but he picked the wrong boat. On Ryan's second attemptC he selected the boat Arun had wanted.

When Kim and Penn arrived at Mercearia, they had to choose a marked sardine can in a basket outside of the doors and then replicate the can's unique label design by painting it on a large wooden door.


Meanwhile, Ryan, who had chosen Vasco da Gama as his explorer, finished the Roadblock and so he and Dusty jumped into third place. Arun and Natalia later left the marina in last place after Arun had to row two boats in order to guess one of the correct explorers.

Dusty and Ryan and Raquel and Cayla seemed to arrive at the sardine task around the same time.

The paintings, however, needed to be exactly, such as painting the inside of white letters black.

Kim and Penn's painting did not pass the test twice, and so Raquel and Cayla took the lead by finishing the task before any of the other teams.

The teams were then required to drive themselves to Santuario Do Cabo Espichel, where they'd find their next clue. But Cayla quickly learned she had lost her team's map, which made Raquel very frustrated. The pair had to stop at a gas station and find another map, but they tried to remain optimistic.


Kim and Penn moved onto the next destination in second place after their third attempt at the painting, and then Ryan and Dusty took off.

Arun and Natalia began painting their wooden door while Ryan and Dusty were still there, and so the father and daughter team hoped to be meticulous and make up some time.

And they certainly did because Ryan and Dusty got their door rejected nine times! It was their tenth attempt that did the trick and put them into third place heading to the next Roadblock. Arun and Natalia were well aware they were in last place at this point.

Once Kim and Penn arrived at the second Roadblock in the penultimate leg in first place, Penn discovered he must count the 106 columns that line a courtyard on both sides of a beautiful church.

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The catch was that a team had to stand in a designated space, within stone boundaries, which made it difficult to see and count the columns in the distance. Once a team gave the correct number to a monk, the pair would be pointed to the next Pit Stop at Farol Do Cabo Espichel, a 231-year-old lighthouse.


Penn said he and Kim both have bad eyesight, and so this definitely wasn't one of their strengths.

Cayla counted all the columns correctly on her first attempt, but Penn was struggling and didn't nail the answer until his eighth guess. The trick was to break the columns into groups of 20 instead of trying to count them as singles.

Raquel and Cayla beat Kim and Penn in a footrace to the Pit Stop, and for finishing the leg in first place, they received a trip for two to the island of St. Lucia. The women hoped to be the fourth all-female team to win The Amazing Race.

Kim and Penn stepped on the Pit Stop mat in second place.

"When we're at our best, we are pretty amazing," Kim gushed.

It took Dusty a few tries to count the columns, but he and Dusty raced to the Pit Stop and made it in third.


After Natalia wrapped up the Roadblock at the church, she and her father placed fourth and were eliminated from The Amazing Race at the Pit Stop.

Although they wouldn't be competing in the final leg for the $1 million, Arun and Natalia were all smiles and very proud of themselves for coming so close. Finishing the penultimate leg was a dream come true for these self-declared Super Fans.

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During the second half of The Amazing Race's two-hour finale episode, the Final 3 teams left Portugal and flew west on the show's charter to their final destination, Los Angeles, CA.

Once the three teams touched down in L.A., they ripped open their first set of clues, which instructed them to head to The Westin Hotel and unlock their next clue in a cluebox ontop of a tower. There were four towers and one cluebox -- containing only one clue -- on each tower.

But first, they had to figure out the combination to the lock by spotting a series of numbers going up and down. The number was written on an elevator that could be seen from the rooftop.


Rachel and Cayla opened their cluebox in first place and learned they must drive themselves to El Pueblo de Los Angeles and search for their next clue at a monument at the end of Calle Olvera street.

Kim and Penn left the hotel in second place, but Ryan and Dusty decided to get in the elevator instead of looking at it from afar, which ate up a lot of their time.

The guys were frantic running around, and two of the towers they had reached already had open clueboxes.

Once at Calle Olvera street, the teams had to find three parts of one clue by smashing a bunch of paper machete pinatas. One team member, however, had to put on a blindfold while his or her partner directed them around the pinatas to find a taco, a tiny donkey and an all-papered star.

Kim and Penn began the task in first place, and Penn decided to be blindfolded. Raquel and Cayla arrived in second place, and Raquel opted to put on the blindfold.

Once Dusty and Ryan finally saw the combination on the elevator, they raced to the pinatas in third place but hoped they'd come across a physical task that would allow them to catch up and maybe even pass another team.


Raquel and Cayla completed the pinata task in first place. One part of their next clue was Sunset Boulevard, another part read "6465," and the third part was S.I.R. Hollywood, where they must park in the marked parking.

Penn found many tiny donkeys to smash, but none of them had a clue inside, and so he and Kim were very confused. However, they eventually finished the job in second place.

Meanwhile, Dusty put on a blindfold and began smashing away.

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Raquel and Cayla made it to S.I.R. Hollywood before any of the other teams, and they were required to make sound effects, recreating the noises of five memorable The Amazing Race scenes, using common items -- including a beachball and plastic wrap.

Once a team created sound effects that were in sync with the movie picture, the pair would receive their next clue.


Kim and Penn felt they were in their element given Penn is a master video editor and Kim actually enjoys foley, the reproduction of sound effects added to films and video, as a hobby. She apparently follows multiple foley TikTok accounts.

However, Raquel and Cayla maintained their lead by finishing the task in first place, and then they headed to the home of the L.A. Galaxy, Dignity Health Sports Park, where they must search the grounds for their next clue.

Kim and Penn left the sound studio in an extremely-close second place, and Ryan and Dusty eventually finished the foley task in third place.

Raquel and Cayla discovered they must solve the riddles on a wall in the soccer field by using the correct images of people, places and things the teams had encountered during their Race around the world.

It was essentially a giant memory quiz the teams had to solve. Once they aced the test, they were told to run through a tunnel where they'd be greeted by a big surprise.

Kim and Penn started the memory task in second place. Kim had drawn pictures of everything they'd encountered on every leg, and so they felt very prepared.


An especially tricky part was remembering what the coin under a rock had looked like during one of the most difficult and patience-testing Roadblock tasks of the season.

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Before Ryan and Dusty arrived at the final task, the two teams guessed many wrong answers -- until Kim and Penn finally finished the job in first place.

"This is how we lose The Amazing Race," Raquel lamented.

Kim and Penn ran to the finish line in first place hand in hand, and they became the oldest couple to ever win the Race.

"It was neck and neck all the way through. You guys were behind, you left ahead," Phil told the cheering couple, who hugged and kissed each other on the mat.


Kim said she hoped their children would be proud of them, and Penn shared how this was a lesson for them in how studying hard pays off.

"I hope our kids saw that it didn't matter where we were going to finish; we were going to work as hard as we could and that the finish doesn't even matter -- even though we finished first, which is really kind of awesome," Penn said with a smile.

"I hope our kids learn that good things can happen outside of your comfort zone," Kim added. "I deal with anxiety, but pushing past it... good things can happen."

Raquel and Cayla crossed the finish line in second place, and Raquel shared how they had been through such a difficult year in the airline industry amid COVID-19.

"We didn't have a job for a year, and then coming back and being this female team that was as much of a powerhouse as we were, the last five legs, we came in second, second, first, first, and second today!" Raquel gushed. "It's pretty bomb, and at the end of the day, we have this amazing experience."

And finally, Ryan and Dusty completed The Amazing Race in third place.


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Dusty said he wanted to be an Amazing Race champion more than anything but what he gained from the journey was so much more than that, including running around the world with his best friend for a month.

"Very few people even said 'hi' or acknowledged my existence once I got arrested, and you always believed in me. Knowing that's in your character... you make me want to be a better person," Ryan told his pal.







About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski