Riley and Maddison McKibbin want to explain their side of the story surrounding the Aparna and Eswar Dhinakaran U-Turn on The Amazing Race season 32. This season has been dominated by the Mine Five alliance consisting of Will & James, Hung & Chee, Riley & Maddison, DeAngelo & Gary, and Aparna & Eswar. But all five teams got to the Top 5, which meant that the alliance finally arrived at its breaking point. On Leg 9, which took place in Cambodia, it became clear to the fans that the real alliance in the game was between Riley & Maddison, Will & James, and Hung & Chee.
However, it is safe to assume that the Amazing Race 32 outsiders Aparna & Eswar and Gary & DeAngelo weren't aware of that tighter group consisting of three teams. So when Riley & Maddison and Gary & DeAngelo were the first ones to arrive at a U-Turn point, the two teams decided to use one U-Turn on Eswar & Aparna and "burn" the other U-Turn available. But because they were in last place and had never won a previous Leg, Eswar & Aparna had a hard time understanding the strategy behind this game move. Some fans were agreed with them, but Riley & Maddison are now clearing the air on what really happened.
In a series of tweets (seen below), The Amazing Race star Aparna Dhinakaran expressed exactly how she felt about the U-Turn. Spoiler alert: she was not happy about it! But during an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, the McKibbin Brothers a.k.a. the Beard Bros explained their side of the story. Maddison started, "The original plan was to U-Turn Gary and DeAngelo, but Gary and DeAngelo were right behind us, so Riley and I on the boat were like, 'We can't U-Turn them right then and there.'" Moreover, Maddison clarified that despite arriving there before Gary & DeAngelo, the NFL players actually found the U-Turn board before them, which made this an even stickier situation. Maddison added, "The reason why Eswar and Aparna were so mad is that they had no idea about our close-knit alliance with Hung & Chee and Will & James. So that's why she said that it didn't make any sense that we would do that. Also, they ended up getting to the board before Will & James and Hung & Chee... so they would've U-Turned one of them. We're loyal, we weren't going back on our word, we were there to protect the two teams that we were in an alliance with." It should be noted that everything that was said by Aparna and Eswar had a clear sense of humor, so the fans shouldn't take it that seriously. Aparna tagged her co-stars in almost every post and was just having fun trash-talking them. She might still be mad about that particular game move, but she has expressed many times how much she likes her co-stars aside from that now-infamous U-Turn.
Nonetheless, Riley and Maddison also took the time to clarify that none of the decisions that they made on TAR 32 had a direct effect on a team's elimination. Maddison went down the list, "Jerry & Frank, they forgot their bag in Manaus. Michelle & Victoria, they got lost in France. Leo & Alana couldn't pick out the spears in Kazakhstan." Riley jumped in, "Even when we yielded the Blondes, they were, like, three to four hours behind. They asked, 'Why didn't you yield DeAngelo & Gary?' Even if we had yielded [Gary & DeAngelo] seven times, it wouldn't have mattered."
The Amazing Race season 32 finale is very close, and these teams are ready to race until the finish line to win $1 million. With so many competitive teams still in the running, it's still anyone's game to take home that prize.