The Amazing Race: The 10 Weirdest Challenges Ever

The Amazing Race is a fun, mostly inoffensive reality show that’s been going since 2001. The 31st season aired in 2019, with fans now subjected to a Rick And Morty/Westworld length season gap, but season 32 is on the way.

The premise sees multiple teams of two competitively racing around the world with unusual tasks, puzzles, and modes of transport on the way. As with similar shows, the wide scope for potential challenges is mostly a good thing, but there are always a few odd, revolting, or plain tedious challenges that manage to slip through.

10 Sandcastles

In season 22, the teams faced their first Roadblock on a beach in French Polynesia. 11 of 400 sandcastles had clues buried underneath them that the teams were forced to dig up and find. However, the catch was that every sandcastle they dug up without a clue hidden underneath had to be reconstructed. A further catch proved to be the intense heat, which made it difficult to get the right consistency of sand to build with, which probably brought back some frustrating childhood memories for the audience.

9 Sushi Roulette

In season 15, the teams take part in a Japanese game show named Sushi Roulette. The teams stood around a giant wheel divided into 11 sections, each section containing a slot of sushi. Two of these slots contained what’s known as a “Wasabi Bomb.” The host would then spin the wheel so the sections were randomly assigned, then, two poor souls would have two minutes to eat their horrible dish. Sushi Roulette has since become a popular game on the amateur video scene.

8 Tea Tasting

The Tea-Tasting Roadblock took place during season 18 in Kolkata in India, and it called back to a previous adventure in China in which the teams tasted a mango/papaya tea at a tea shop in Kunming. The challenge saw the teams faced with thousands of cups of tea, only a few of which were the ones they’d tasted in China. They were forced to finish every cup of tea they tried until they found the right one, with some contestants spending hours knocking it back.

7 Shaving Your Head

This one first showed up in season five but was also used in season seven and season 20. It didn’t require much from the teams except for letting someone shave their head clean, which was a bit of fun for some, but quite harrowing for most.

The head-shaving was part of an ancient Hindu ritual that was supposed to bring luck, though, when every member of every team does it, you have to wonder who exactly that luck is supposed to favor.

6 Watermelon Launch

During season 17, the teams visited England, where one challenge honored the English culture by having the contestants ride a horse to a field full of catapults before dismounting and launching watermelons at a suit of armor. The challenge was odd enough before Claire managed the spectacular feat of firing a watermelon into her own face. Thankfully, she wasn’t injured, and, more importantly, she managed to avoid elimination.

5 Argentinian Feast

Eating challenges are always a little odd since watching people eat is quite weird in itself, though Brad Pitt gets a pass for some reason. But, spice endurance challenges are easier to swallow than the gluttony ones in which you’re forced to watch people stuff their faces. In this case, during season seven, contestants had to eat four pounds of assorted unappetizing meats such as udder, blood sausage, intestine, kidney, etc. It wasn’t pretty, and barely any of the contestants managed to complete the revolting task.

4 Russian Delight

While it’s less disgusting to watch, caviar gluttony is one of the most insane types of gluttony to watch, as proved in Frasier’s “Roe to Perdition.” This challenge occurred in season five and had each contestant eat a disturbing 2.2 pounds of the rich, salty, and morally ambiguous delicacy. Watching it, you can almost taste it…

3 Hang Your Heads

The Amazing Race seems to enjoy humanizing fish to make humans feel like monsters. This time, in season 23, we got a vast amount of fishheads instead of unborn fish babies. Thankfully no-one was forced to eat them all.

Contestants who chose this particular detour had to go to a warehouse loaded with fishheads, skewer 10 of them on a giant spike, repeat 6 times, then wheelbarrow them to a far-off drying rack.

2 Cheese Wheels Of Doom

This challenge appeared in season 14 and season 22 and was based on the popular Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake competition where, once a year near Gloucestershire, England, a bunch of nutcases chase a wheel of cheese down an incredibly steep hill. In the challenge, the teams have to take some decaying cheese-holders up a steep hill, then retrieve wheels of cheese and bring them down the hill to a shed at the bottom whilst trying not to kill themselves or each other in the process…

1 Doggy Style

This challenge was part of the Detour in St. John’s on The Amazing Race: Canada and was a particularly odd one. It seemed like they started with the title and worked their way backward. In it, the teams had to load up a small wooden cart with eggs and glass bottles of milk, then strap the cart to a dog and coax the dog to pull the cart up a steep street without breaking anything.

It was fun to watch, though, and such challenges turn reality TV watching into an interesting kind of anthropology where the showmakers’ thought processes are on display just as much as the contestants. With no limits or box around what the challenges can be, it’s hard to say what kind of challenges we can expect in the future.