The Amazing Race crowned Jason Case and Amy Diaz the winners of its 23rd season during Sunday night's broadcast of the CBS reality competition's two-hour finale.

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The "Dating Couple" team was the first team to cross the 23rd season of The Amazing Race's finish line in Juneau, Alaska, claiming the $1 million grand prize.

"Exes" Timothy Sweeney and Marie "Reebs" Mazzocchi finished in second place, and "Married ER Doctors" Nicole Jasper and Travis Jasper claimed third place. "Cousins" Leo Temory and Jamal Zadran finished in fourth and were unable to compete in the final leg as a result.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Jason and Amy talked about their The Amazing Race experience and victory. Below is the first half of their interview. Check back with us soon for the concluding portion and for more interviews with the season's Final 4 teams.

Reality TV World: What's the status of your relationship now? Have you talked about getting engaged or anything like that in the near future?

Jason Case: Right out of the gate! (Laughs)

Amy Diaz: Yeah Jason, what's the status huh?! (Laughs)

Jason Case: Well, Amy and I have talked about that. We do have a future together, but we want to share this moment with each other for what it is and it's winning The Amazing Race and enjoying the emotional high that we're on right now and the friendships that we've created. That's what it's about right now for us. But yeah, we do have a future.

Reality TV World: It looked like you ran to the finish line pretty confident you were in first place and going to win, was that actually the case?

Amy Diaz: Yes, we knew driving over to the Pit Stop, the finish line, that we were at least an hour-and-a-half ahead of the other teams. When Tim and Marie arrived at the totem poles, we were more than halfway through the actual challenge, and it was so, so, so tough and physically challenging, that there's no way anyone could just roll through that in like a half hour.

And then when we left, Travis and Nicole had just arrived. So we knew that we had to leave and we saw the clue say, "Go, go, go!" So unless something really crazy happened with our taxi driver getting lost -- and in Alaska, there really isn't much there, I think everybody pretty much knows where everything is.

Jason Case: And a lot of credit to Amy on that last leg. She gained us a lead by hitting that flour drop on her second try. Even Marie was out there 13 or 14 [times] or whatever, and it took Nicole 20-something tries to hit it.

[Amy], in her second try, just gave us that cushion we needed. She was fighting through a sprained ankle on the glacier, which was not easy for her, especially climbing the ice wall and crossing that crevasse.

And then once we got to that totem poles challenge, we hadn't seen any other teams until that point, so we didn't know how big our lead was. But like Amy said, that was probably one of the most physical challenges that we endured on the entire Race, and there was no way you're going to do it in two minutes.

Reality TV World: How long do you think that totem poles task took you guys to complete? Any idea?

Jason Case: A couple hours.

Amy Diaz: Yeah, we were there for a couple hours.

Reality TV World: You were shown repeatedly mentioning how you hadn't taken any notes on the currencies in the all countries you'd gone to, but you two still seemed to solve the totem pole task without any real issues. Was that actually the case, and if so, how did you pull that off?

Amy Diaz: I actually remembered a few. We remembered all the currency except for two. Yeah, it was two that we couldn't remember. We actually -- the way that we figured it out is because they were color-coordinated. So, we're really good at puzzles. I'm a huge fan of Legos, a humongous fan of Legos, so I was like, "Yes!" We actually have a whole Lego City in our room. Anyway, (laughs)...

Jason Case: Through the process of elimination and color-coordination, we figured it out, what the spelling of those last two currency was. Amy is very worldly anyways, so she knew a lot of the currency right on the top of her head. So we weren't able to use our notes at that point, so they would've been useless, which we didn't know at the time.

Amy Diaz: The two currencies that we had an issue with were the one from The United Arab Emirates and then I knew that when we were in Indonesia, I remembered they were rupees, but their actual whole name is a little longer than that.

I remembered that because I've traveled to India several times and they have rupees too, so it was The United Arab Emirates that we were having a hard time with. And we literally just put it together based on the color coordination and the way that the totem poles matched up. It was like a puzzle.

Jason Case: Yeah, don't ask what it is right now. (Laughs) We'd have no idea.

Amy Diaz: Yeah, I still don't remember. (Laughs)

Reality TV World: You guys finished so many legs in second place. How frustrating was that for you, and do you think because you didn't finish in first, maybe some of the teams underestimated you throughout the Race? Maybe that presented you with a little bit of an advantage even?

Jason Case: Great question. We haven't gotten asked that, but I'm glad you just picked that up. Amy and I felt we were the strongest team in the entire race because we had lost to two Express Passes.

I mean, when somebody doesn't have to complete a Roadblock or a Detour, you save sometimes hours of time. And we finished, one time, seconds behind an Express Pass, and then a few minutes behind an Express Pass. So those would've been two first-place finishes for us right off the bat.

And in Lisbon, it was my mistake. I wanted to go left and Amy, apparently, knew where she was going and had picked the right way to go. (Laughs) So that should've been a first place. I mean, our first place came when the playing field was even -- there were no Express Passes, everybody started at the same time -- and that showed our true colors as a team.

Amy Diaz: Exactly. Because both times obviously in the final leg, we won by over an hour, or it was like an hour and 15 minutes or something like that. And then when we won our first leg finally in Indonesia, again, it was exactly an hour from the time that Tim and Marie checked-in. So when it was a level playing field, we definitely...

Jason Case: Killed it.

Amy Diaz: Yeah, killed it. (Laughs)

Reality TV World: Going into the finale, did you guys think it was anyone's game since all the teams were evenly matched with one guy and one girl? This time around, there were no all-male teams in the finale or anything like that to compete against.

Amy Diaz: Absolutely. Absolutely. When we got to the Roadblock with the plane, we pretty much knew that it was going to be all the girls or all the guys competing against each other, because we felt there was going to be another Roadblock that might have been a little bit more physically challenging, which we wanted the guys to do.

So I think the three couples were pretty much thinking the same way, you know, I would compete against Nicole and Marie. And Jason would compete against Tim and Travis.

Jason Case: That's Amy's modesty talking right there, because there's no way any other people -- I mean, anything can happen in The Amazing Race, so any team could've won no question -- but as far as the teams being matched up Amy was way stronger than Nicole. So we knew we had a competitive edge.

At least I felt we had a competitive edge going into the final leg, because we carried Nicole and Travis through those last few legs with Amy helping [Nicole] out as much as she did. So, you know, our biggest competitors there were Tim and Marie, which in their type of relationship, got them to the finals, but they were bound to have a breakdown at some point.

And Amy and I were just coming into our perfect situation going into that final leg. We had just completed this Race as a new couple and got to know our strengths and weaknesses together. They balanced each other out and we were firing on all cylinders going into the final leg with a lot of momentum.

So I thought we had a little competitive advantage emotionally as a team, whereas you saw Travis and Nicole had a lot of breakdowns emotionally. And Amy and I have maintained a really strong network between us two.

Above is the first half of Jason and Amy's exclusive interview with Reality TV World. Check back with us soon for the concluding portion and for more interviews with the season's Final 4 teams.


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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