‘Amazing Race’ Season 29 Premiere: Air Date Confirmation, Cast Reveal, Schoolyard Picks, Vet Contestants And More

The Amazing Race Season 29 is finally coming, and fans only need to wait a few more months before the fast-paced reality TV show returns to CBS. After months of silence, CBS has officially announced that TAR 29 would premiere on April 21, 2017, which would mean that the reality TV show would be keeping its previous Friday timeslot. With the air date of The Amazing Race 29 fast approaching, leaks about its contestants and the season’s unique twist have begun emerging, and if rumors prove to be right, there is a good chance that the upcoming race would be one of the best ones yet.

Considering that The Amazing Race Season 29 was announced in Q4 2016, there is a good chance that the official cast reveal for the upcoming race would happen sometime around the middle of March 2017, according to reality TV-themed website Carter Matt. While unconfirmed, this date would fall along the usual timeline set by networks when it comes to the debut of TV shows. The Amazing Race 26, for example, premiered on February 25, and its cast was announced on January 20, roughly a month before the show began airing. Thus, with TAR 29’s April 21 release date, there is a good chance that CBS might reveal the cast around March 15 to 20.

Though official details about The Amazing Race Season 29 are quite few, CBS has given fans of the fast-paced reality TV series a good number of clues over the past few months. For one, the team at RealityFanForum claim to have spotted racers for TAR 29 state that the upcoming season would feature a schoolyard pick when it comes to the selection of teams. This means that, unlike the previous seasons where teams are composed of contestants who intimately knew each other, The Amazing Race 29 would feature teams composed completely of strangers.

While officially unconfirmed, the schoolyard pick twist has been teased by CBS during the casting calls for TAR 29, when it specifically stated that it was looking for racers who are open to the premise of traveling the world with a complete stranger. Apart from this, the team at RealityFanForum stated that they saw 22 individuals participating in a pre-race event, seemingly as a means to determine the order of the schoolyard pick.

One thing that attracted the attention of numerous fans, however, was the fact that TAR 29 seems to be going back to its roots in terms of its contestants. The identities of the racers have not been announced to date, but the team at RealityFanForum that witnessed the pre-race event taking place in L.A. have managed to identify a number of the contestants for The Amazing Race Season 29. Contrary to TAR 28, which featured social media stars, the contestants for TAR 29 seem to be racers that everyday Americans could easily relate to.

One of the most interesting contestants for The Amazing Race 29 who was spotted by the RealityFanForum team is an amputee, which has been identified by fans to be Redmond Ramos, a former U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class. According to the official U.S. Marine Corps Facebook page, Redmond Ramos was deployed in Afghanistan in 2011, where he was wounded in battle after stepping on an IED. Despite losing his leg in the incident, however, Ramos has since bounced back, even becoming an amputee racer. His tattoo, which reads “I’m With Stumpy,” was spotted by TAR fans during the LA pre-race event.

It’s not just Ramos who is a compelling contestant in The Amazing Race 29, too. Fans who spotted the racers on the pre-race event also noted that Olivia Beauregard, a firefighter from Providence, Rhode Island, would also be participating in the event. Another notable female racer for The Amazing Race 29 is Ashton Theiss, a realtor from Fort Worth, Texas. What is particularly interesting about Theiss is the fact that she was considered as one of the Top 30 Most Beautiful Women of Fort Worth in 2015.

The Amazing Race is one of American television’s most popular reality TV series, spanning a long history and an equally long list of awards. While the ratings of the reality TV series have dipped during its recent seasons, it is still regarded by millions of American families as one of the most wholesome, fun, and intense TV shows in the country. If The Amazing Race 29 manages to capture the hearts of U.S. viewers once more with its unique twist and back-to-basics contestants, there is a very good chance that TAR would, for all intents and purposes, be great again.

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[Featured Image by Jemal Countess/Getty Images]