The Deadbolt Exclusive - Fear and Forgiveness with Mika and Canaan of The Amazing Race

Fear and Forgiveness with Mika and Canaan of The Amazing Race
by Reg Seeton

The racing action of The Amazing Race 15 has been heating up, literally, as the teams continued navigate their way through the sun drenched streets of Dubai. This week of The Amazing Race gave fans one of the most intense and dramatic finishes in recent Amazing Race memory, as Harlem Globetrotters Flight Time and Big Easy were headed for elimination before Nashville couple Mika and Canaan faced their biggest roadblock of the race in a six story water slide high above the scorching sands of Dubai.

While Mika and Canaan ascended the water slide to the top, Mika's fear of heights kicked in and became their turning point in the race, as Flight Time and Big Easy arrived behind them and Mika struggled to face her fear in order to move forward in The Amazing Race. With Canaan trying to help Mika overcome her fear, Flight Time shot down the slide and Big Easy used Mika's fear to his advantage by trash talking her away from the slide in order to get ahead. In the end, despite a heartfelt and gut-wrenching attempt to overcome her fear of heights, Mika had to accept it was too late to save their spot in The Amazing Race and both Mika and Canaan became the latest team to be eliminated from The Amazing Race.

The next morning after one of the most painful and shocking endings in recent Amazing Race memory, we went one-on-one with Mika Combs and Canaan Smith for an exclusive Amazing Race chat to find out what went wrong, how they accepted their elimination, how they worked through it as a couple, and if there was anything they wished they could have done differently throughout this season of The Amazing Race.

THE DEADBOLT: Mika, have you taken swimming lessons yet?

MIKA COMBS: Well, no I haven't.

CANAAN SMITH: Yes, you have. I taught you how to swim. I taught her how to swim in Nashville.

MIKA: Oh, yeah. Well, that was beforehand. It wasn't really so much a swimming thing with the slide. It was a lot of the height. You know, six stories high into water. Yeah, not my forte.

THE DEADBOLT: You know, I was thinking of an upside. At least you guys didn't lose your passport and you know how to open a briefcase.

CANAAN: [laughs] It's true, man.

THE DEADBOLT: So what was going through your minds on the way to the water slide in the cab?

MIKA: Well, Canaan, I think he was bracing himself for trying to deal with me and he's trying to convince me that it's okay. And I'm already like, my minds running wild, because I don't know what it is yet. It just says take a leap of faith at the aqua adventure. So, okay, it's obviously height and water. I was just like, "Oh, what is this going to be?" I was just scared to death.

THE DEADBOLT: Canaan, do you think it would've helped if you just went down the slide first?

CANAAN: No, I don't, man, just because the fact that she needed some talking to. She needed somebody to be there for her. She actually asked me to stay up there with her. I would've gone down. But people that have fears like that, they want somebody there beside them. So I just decided to wait it out with her as long as I could and then once The Globetrotters passed us up, at that point I'm like, "All right, I'm just going down."

THE DEADBOLT: How much do you think the heat played a part in the emotions running so high?

CANAAN: [laughs] I don't know, man. I don't know that they really played much of a part at that point.

MIKA: With the slide, no, it didn't play a part. It could've been twenty degrees or forty degrees and just to slide down I still would've been scared out of my mind [laughs].

THE DEADBOLT: How did you guys reconcile what happened? How did you get past it?

CANAAN: If you realize how terrible it feels to resent somebody then it's easier to forgive, like I did. Forgiveness it one of the greatest feelings and resentment is one of the worst. So I like to think I had an opportunity to be there and let Mika just be okay with it and us move forward from this. I have a choice of either doing that or holding it against her and then her feeling bad for the rest of her life [laughs]. So it was an obvious decision.

THE DEADBOLT: And Mika, did you feel the same way?

MIKA: Yeah. I'm glad that he forgave me for sure. He said that he forgave me when we were on the mat. As we were walking away, I was thinking, "Okay, how does Canaan really feel? Does he still like me or ...?"

THE DEADBOLT: How surprised were you guys at Big Easy's trash talking?

CANAAN: Very surprised! Very, very surprised. I mean, we understand that he's a basketball player and that's what they do, they talk trash on the court. But you're dealing with a real person and real emotions and hysterical crying because she's afraid. It's just not cool to capitalize on somebody's misfortune like that. You know, he has a daughter of his own. And if that was his daughter up there instead of Mika and I came along and did what he did, I don't think he'd be very happy with me.

THE DEADBOLT: Have you spoken to him since?

CANAAN: Yeah, we've worked it out. They apologized a hundred times and they really are great guys. So it's all good.

THE DEADBOLT: If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

MIKA: [laughs] Well, I would want to go down the water slide, that's for sure. You know, I would try, but it's not like I didn't try last night. So it's kind of hard to even say. I don't know. I think we did a pretty good job as far as being a newly dating couple and it being we've only known each other for a few months to actually go as far as we did. I'm pretty proud of it, you know? We didn't know each other that well, and especially compared to the other teams.

CANAAN: I don't know if there's anything I can say we'd do different. Maybe take our time a little bit more with the clues instead of just reading it and rushing. Other than that, man, we're proud of ourselves.

THE DEADBOLT: You should be. Those were two of the hardest legs I've ever seen.

CANAAN: Yeah, they really were.

THE DEADBOLT: So how did you feel watching it last night? What emotions were coming through last night?

MIKA: I was a little at times embarrassed, because here I am 22 years old and I'm on top of a slide with floaties. So it's going to get the best of me and I have a fear of water and heights. I hope that people understand. It is what it is and unfortunately I didn't go.

THE DEADBOLT: Is there anything that didn't air that you guys wished we saw?

CANAAN: Well, I tried to fight Big Easy at the top of the slide and they didn't show that [laughs]. I did not, really. I just got up and kind of got into his face and told what I thought about what he was doing to Mika. But they didn't show that.

THE DEADBOLT: I was on your Twitter page last night and I saw that you guys have an album coming out. What's that all about?

CANAAN: Actually, I'm in the process of recording new music for myself. We're both signed country music artists and I'm a songwriter in Nashville. So what we do is we write songs and record them and hopefully we either get them cut by another artist or we hope to make them big ourselves. But we both have fresh material up on MySpace right now.

THE DEADBOLT: So what did you guys take away from the entire experience?

MIKA: Well, we just grew as a couple. So we're stronger now. What do you think, Canaan?

CANAAN: I learned how to be okay with the decisions that you make. You know, every day you wake up and you go and do something that eleven other teams are trying to do the identical same thing and you have to figure out the best way to do it for yourself, how to get there and what works for you, and then you live with that decision. So it's a cool life lesson, you know? You can apply that to anything. You learn how to be yourself and stand behind what decisions you make and be comfortable in your own skin.

-- Reg Seeton