Raquel Moore and Cayla Platt had hit their peak altitude flying into the final task of The Amazing Race 33. The friends had run a solid race up to that point, approaching the hardest tasks and biggest mistakes with calm heads and a laugh. That culminated in a string of first places, making them the team to beat until the final minutes of season 33. But unfortunately, some last-second turbulence shook up their landing, as a memory task tripped them, causing Kim and Penn Holderness to surge past them to the finish line and snatching victory from them. Raquel and Cayla became friends as flight attendants, finding kindred spirits. That camaraderie turned out to be one of their strongest qualities on the race, as they were able to communicate effectively and rarely fought. Combined with their travel experience, they finished in reasonably good standing with the rest of the pack. But when they came back to race after a 19-month hiatus, a lot had changed for them. Though they still approached racing with the fun, competitive spirit they always had, losing their jobs during the pandemic took its toll. It added even more fuel to their fire and desire to become the fourth all-female team to win an American season. And indeed, they were well on their way to doing just that. They hit their stride at the season’s halfway point, never falling below second place. They tout their success to their growth and ability to learn from mistakes, laugh them off, and not fixate too much. As the teams got smaller, their confidence only got bigger. Their success at some choice Roadblocks gave them two first-place finishes in a row. And they were on their way to it being a threepeat for the majority of their time in L.A., cruising out to a lead from the jump. But in the final tennis-themed memory task, they left things open for Kim and Penn to catch up. And Kim’s meticulous preparation allowed them to surge ahead, leaving Raquel and Cayla out of the running just feet away from the finish. Now out of the race, Raquel and Cayla talk with Parade.com about everything that happened in the final task, how the lows they hit during the pandemic affected how they raced, and how they reacted to their overall performance. I can’t imagine how crushing it must have been to get to that final task in first place, only to end up losing right at the finish line. Talk me through everything that happened there.Raquel Moore: It’s so hard. Because when we were putting it together, I felt really confident in the moment. There were a couple of things I wasn’t sure about. But I’m pretty good at memory stuff. So I thought I had it. And then when they were like, “Fault, fault, fault,” we didn’t know what we were doing.Cayla Platt: We kept second-guessing ourselves. And then when you’re up against Kim and Penn, who are just gods and goddesses of memory, that pressure builds. Penn’s basically photographic. And so I heard the music building in my head.Raquel: And then there’s the thing that whoever wins that wins the show. It’s very defeating. But at the end of the day, we still came in second place. And I think that’s pretty wicked. That being said, you had the momentum throughout the final leg. How confident were you going into that final task?Cayla: Yeah, I mean, the second we got the elevator, it just set the tone. I could see we were the first ones in the car. We left the pinatas first. We left the foley first. And in my mind, I was like, “We have such good momentum. And then, when it came to the memory challenge at the very end, we studied for this, we took notes. What tripped us up was the last day of all things. We’re studying the whole entire season. But at the pinatas, we didn’t think, “Oh, we should remember today, too.” We were just like, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” I mean, you see our personalities. Genuinely throughout this whole thing, that’s truly how we are.Raquel: I had a blindfold on, so I didn’t see the candy. And Cayla was so far away. So when we saw the candy pictures, we thought, “It has to be colorful. That’s a no-brainer.” I couldn’t take my mask off until I walked away from the pinatas. But if I had taken it off right after I finished, I would have seen the candy. God, if only I had taken off like a couple because in my head I was like, Well, if I just take it off now, if I peek now, and I could have seen the candy.Cayla: But Penn and Kim are such a strong team. And it’s honestly a blessing. I respected every team this season. I think casting did an amazing job. But with this final three, I felt that it was going to be us three from the day we went back. I think any one of the three could have won. So to be in first place all day in front of Kim and Penn and Ryan and Dusty was just such a validating feeling of how hard we fought and how much I truly felt like we deserved it. But with that being said, Kim and Penn were at our heels the whole time. We knew we could not slip up; we knew we couldn’t.Raquel: And we’re going back and forth. We had done the pinatas a little bit quicker. But then they passed us on the foley challenge. That was a little bit more of a struggle for us. I mean, it was a matter of minutes.Cayla: It was definitely in their wheelhouse, the behind-the-scenes music stuff. All that was completely new to me. I didn’t know that that was a job. It’s really cool. And the Penn had his photographic memory, so I was like, “Oh no, we’re in trouble.” Cayla, you just mentioned the affirmation you had being in the lead on the final leg. We saw that happen a few times throughout the race, where you were manifesting a first-place finish until you finally got it twice in a row. How much did that affect your mindset going into the final leg?Cayla: We knew we could compete. But you need that first place as validation, you know? Finishing in first at the end of Legs 9 and 10, Raquel and I are like, “Oh, my God, we won first place.” And it was like an aha moment of, “Well, we can do this. We can win the whole thing.” It’s an indescribable feeling. We obviously believed in ourselves. I believe in Raquel so much. She’s just one of the most impressive women I’ve ever met. But getting first place two legs leading up to the finale was everything we needed to get that final push and have that confidence. Because I don’t know if we would have run with such confidence on that final leg if we didn’t have two first-place wins under our belt. Because we’re going into it with Kim and Penn, who have four, and Ryan and Dusty, who have three. It was awesome that we also had multiple first-place wins under our belt. Because it would have been a little intimidating if we did it going into the finale with two teams who had won first place multiple times. But now you have three teams. You said in the premiere your strongest quality is your ability to see eye-to-eye. It did seem like even the times you made mistakes, you would laugh them off or dissolve the tension. Did that chemistry come naturally?Raquel: I think it’s just who we are as humans off of this show. It’s just our day-to-day. And I think it was really important for us going into the show that America sees us and the world sees us for the people we are. And at the end of the day, really learning to stay present at the moment, because it still is an amazing experience. And you can’t take that for granted. Yes, it’s a race, and yes, it’s stressful. But just live in the moment. We’re in these amazing countries doing these crazy cool challenges, having these insane memories. So when you don’t lose sight of that, you really learn to just have fun with it and actually enjoy what you’re doing.Cayla: I don’t think getting into it with each other accomplishes anything. Going in, the producers were like, “Have you guys ever had a conflict? Have you guys ever fought?” And it’s like, “No, because we handle it like mature women.” But we also handle things in humor. We just laugh through it; I guess it’s all you really can do.Raquel: It’s so much easier and less stressful when you can just laugh at a situation versus getting upset. It takes so much more energy to sit and soak and get pissed about something than just joke about it.Cayla: I can be very self deprecating a time. It’s how we handle ourselves on our own. And then the fact that we both handled it that way was truly a blessing. That’s why I think we were just such a strong team together. I don’t think we lost sight of ourselves once, even when we had moments of losing the map. It is what it is. When you came back to the race, your lives had changed profoundly, having lost your jobs and moving in with your parents. Did that change your perspective into racing when things picked back up?Raquel: I just know that when you go through really hard things in life, like losing your job or COVID, when you are really mentally struggling, I think the only way for me to get out of that was learning to figure out ways where I can get myself out of that space. To figure out where my happiness was. Meditation gave me a lot of peace, just knowing that there are so many serious hardships and crazy things going on in the world. It’s all about how you handle things and how you view things. Take all the [expletive] things in your life and make it positive. So I think it just really helped me overcome the emotional turmoil that I was going through. I knew what it was like to be in such a low place. It allowed me also to learn to get out of places like that and learn to be happy. It just puts things in perspective. If I’ve overcome having to move back home at 30, losing my job, not really having that sense of purpose because the world was at such a standstill. Our careers were taken from us. Then you’re on the race. I thought, “I’ve handled some pretty big stuff in the last year. I can handle the challenges in front of me because I’ve been through some heavy stuff.“Cayla: And I mean, she really did. She was like, “We’re gonna meditate every morning.” She was always positive and supportive, but even more so the second time going around. It wasn’t just positivity. It wasn’t just encouragement. There was a calmness too. So when we had the freakout moments of like, “Oh my god, we messed up,” there was a more calm approach. There wasn’t this underlying feeling of panic. And she drove that for us. I think we both knew how to handle each other when those moments arose. But looking back over the whole race, she was the one with the calm, positive mindset throughout the whole thing, especially going back that second time. So some fans have been pulling stats. And according to them, you have the second-highest average performance for a female/female team in Amazing Race history. And I know you really wanted to bring it home as the fourth female/female winning team. Though you couldn’t do that, how do you look back on your performance overall?Cayla: I would never say this race is built for women. But I mean, that stat is incredible. I truly believe to my core that we were going to be the fourth all-female team to win this. And with it being so close, it could have happened. Just being a fan of the show, I’m geeking out. It makes me feel proud, especially running against physically fit men like Dusty and Ryan. I wanted to compete with them and be on an even playing field, and I truly think that we showed that.Raquel: I think it’s amazing because we never limited our beliefs. We always thought that we could do it. It just gave us even more driving power when we were against male teams like Dusty and Ryan, who were so physically fit. So to be good in all those types of challenges, we were like, “Oh, we could do it too.” It just made us want to be better. It set the bar high for us, but we always thought we could do it. So I think there’s a lot of power in that.Next, check out our interview with The Amazing Race 33 winners Kim and Penn Holderness.
