Dude, you keep mentioning things that are completely irrelevant to the argument here. For instance, your insipid cheerleader bashing is completely without merit. Whether the cheerleaders are morons or not is irrelevant the sole question that's posed is whether the lucky advantage of having the final challenge before a yield tailored to their specific strength helped Victor & Tammy which it clearly did.
It's very clear that Jen and Kisha were so far ahead of the Cheerleaders that had they not been yielded they would've most certainly been in the final leg. We than have four possible scenarios: Margie & Luke make it to the yield first (Irrelevant. They used their yield), Tammy & Victor make it to the yield first and yield Jen and Kisha, Jen and Kisha make it to the yield before Tammy and Victor and don't get yielded, or Cara and Jamie make it to the yield (Irrelevant. Their performance is not effected by whether or not Tammy and Victor know Chinese so we can assume they'd still finish MUCH later than the sisters)
This then leaves us with a very simple question with a very simple answer. If Tammy and Victor didn't know fluent Chinese and did the costume challenge would they have taken longer than Jen and Kisha to find the yield? Answer: Maybe. There are reasons why we would believe that Tammy and Victor could get lost: Every other team got lost, They've gotten lost before, They've shown a propensity to continue with something after it clearly seems wrong, the locals in that area were giving all teams mixed directions.
They fact you say they've done it before is evidence they wouldn't do it again is proposterous. And the fact Tammy realized it was wrong before and didn't make Victor stop doesn't make it any more likely that she'd stop him this time. Regardless of what they said in their little interviews, they didn't change their dynamic at all. Victor was still stubborn and he still made the decisions, ignoring Tammy's concern. I mean in that very leg Tammy told them to quit the diving task much earlier but he insisted they keep it up.
Fact of the matter is that if that challenge wasn't wholly based on a persons ability to speak Chinese we don't know what would've happen. There's a chance JEn and Kisha would've made it to the final three. But LUCKILY for Victor and Tammy that critical challenge was suited to their strengths.
Well, I think the points that I brought up are quite relevant to my argument(s). My "insipid" cheerleader bashing is to support my belief that they would not have won the race, even without T&V's language advantage. The same goes for K&J. You're right, we could speculate until the cows come home, so if you want something more concrete, let's look at some numbers in the attached image:
Judging by the performance of the last 4 teams, T&V and M&L were the strongest -- although they both had flops (T&V in Transylvania, and M&L on the final leg). Neither of the other teams reached the mat 1st, with the exception of K&J on their first leg in China. And we know that only happened because Tammy and Victor carried them through the calligraphy challenge with their Mandarin-speaking skills. I mean, come on.
And if we are splitting hairs, you said "the sole question that's posed is whether the lucky advantage of having the final challenge before a Yield tailored to their specific strength helped Victor & Tammy which it clearly did" -- Yes, the yield can deal a major blow, which it did to K&J, but like I said before, they made so many bad decisions in the few legs prior that you can't really blame T&V and the Yield for eliminating them. Let's think about it: Leaving your passports and bags in Thailand and setting yourselves back a number of hours, getting lost in the streets of China for hours, performing very poorly at the swimming challenge, performing slowly at the eating challenge and downing 4 bottles of water, and oh yeah, having to pee right before hitting the mat. You know that old trick question: What weighs more -- a ton of brick or a ton of feathers? The yield was as equally responsible as their poor decisions for why they were eliminated. Poor decisions weighed down on Cara and Jamie too, so if it wasn't K&J getting cut, it would have been the cheerleaders going home.
So if you look back on the numbers and at Tammy and Victor's performance was arguably pretty strong. Same goes for Margie and Luke. If you put aside T&V's language advantage and looked at the numbers before leg 9, which 2 teams would you choose as most likely to make it to the final 3?
