No strangers to fighting from the back of the pack, George and Pam Mladenov had started to sneak their way ahead of some of the other teams ever since landing on the Pit Stop mat last during a non-elimination leg of the race.
“Starting in fourth place for us when we had been so used to starting right at the bottom of the pack almost felt like we were starting first for a change,” Pam told 10 Play. “It was things out of our control — drivers that didn’t know where we were going or were too slow or not playing to our strengths — ended up leading us to the bottom again.”
Arriving at a road block where one team member had to make a pair of shoes, Pam was able to make up some time the siblings had lost and left ahead of Teddy and Harry.
“Unfortunately, sometimes luck is a critical element on the race and we had a bit of bad luck in that temple and our time on the race ended,” George added.
Teams had to search through hundreds of lanterns in a temple to find the one with an English word hanging off it and whisper it to a temple keeper for their final clue before checking in with Beau at the Pit Stop. George and Pam, sadly, were the last team to find it and arrived at the Pit Stop last. Unlike the earlier leg, this one saw the pair eliminated from the race.
“The fact that it came down to one little bit of bad luck that ended our time in the race is something that I’m very proud of,” George continued. “I think we showed that two ordinary people from the suburbs with different personalities and a large age gap can do very well.
“We weren’t the strongest, we weren’t the fittest but we probably had the best chemistry out there. When you work together really well like Pam and I did on the race, we did really well and that’s something that, when I reflect on, I’m very proud of.”
As a two-time Australian Survivor all star, George admitted that he’s also been a massive fan of The Amazing Race. “I had an Amazing Race-themed 16th birthday and if you told 16-year-old George that you’ll play the Amazing Race with your little sister…. I would have never believed it in a million years.
“I had the absolute pleasure and honour of having Pam by my side and the fact that we brought so much entertainment to the Amazing Race as a team… that just gives me so much joy,” he said.
“Something about George I really admire is that he’s generally very calm under pressure and he’s used to facing very stressful situations, given that he played two back-to-back seasons of Survivor and in his previous work life,” Pam added.
“For me, that was something I wasn’t necessarily used to, those really high-pressured situations… it was all very new to me and I think I’m very lucky I had George there to push me through. We had some tough moments but we’re brother and sister and I’m really lucky to have shared the whole experience with George. We created some really special moments I’ll cherish and keep with me for a long time.”
George and Pam’s dynamic was the talk of some of the other teams on the race, but the siblings told 10 Play that the whole experience has made them closer than ever before.
“We experienced turmoils, trials and tribulations on the race,” George explained, “we came through them working extremely well and they are the kinds of memories we’ll cherish for life.”
“I think the difference between George and I and a lot of the other teams is that we came in knowing we weren’t going to be physically the strongest team, we knew what our differences were and we faced a lot of challenges — particularly in the first three legs,” Pam agreed.
“There were some really difficult moments for me throughout the race where it would have been easy to just give up, but I knew that wasn’t going to be an option because I didn’t want to let George down and I knew he was going to be there to pick me up in those hard moment as well,” she said.
Since the race, George has been busy working on his upcoming book How to Win Friends and Manipulate People which he promised would “first and foremost be entertaining like every single time people have seen me on television”.
“I want to give people practical tools and advice they might be able to use in their day-to-day lives to win friends and manipulate them. People get scared of the word manipulation but if you can have the ability to win friends and manipulate them you can get a great win-win situation for you and your friend and then you can seize and control power. That’s the knowledge I want to share, that’s what I’ll be doing in my book that comes out very soon which you can pre-order now.”
The pair were competing on behalf of the Bankstown Women's Health Centre, a non-profit organisation run by women, for women and provides free or discounted health and wellbeing services to women of the community.
“The fact that we brought so much exposure and interest to the critical issue of needing to properly resource every single women’s health centre right around NSW, particularly the Bankstown Women's Centre, makes me really proud of the effort that we put out there,” George said.
“I’ve seen firsthand the work that the Bankstown Women's Health Centre does in empowering the local women of Bankstown and making sure that women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities have access to services and information they need.
“Part of the work that the centre in Bankstown doesn’t get adequately funded for is the preventative work in domestic violence, and the role they play in educating — particularly women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities is so important and the fact that we put the Bankstown Women's Health Centre — and every women’s health centre in NSW — front and centre is something that I’m very proud of from our time on the Amazing Race.”
You can find out more about the Bankstown Women’s Health Centre here.
