Recap: A first place finish

The Amazing Race - Check out a map of Mel and Mike’s journey so far, plus previous stories

Mel and Mike White continued their domination with a first place finish on “The Amazing Race” Sunday night.

This leg of the race took them from a pit stop in Austria, where they finished second last week, to Bucharest, Romania, and Brasov, Transylvania.

Along the way, some of the series’ signature airport drama returned, as both brother/sister team Victor and Tammy and husband/wife Brad and Victoria were felled by their flights.

After finishing in first place last week, Victor and Tammy were off to a great start—until their flight from Munich to Bucharest had technical difficulties and had to return to Munich.

That, along with some later problems during the detour, jettisoned the frontrunners from first to eighth place, and they just barely stayed in the race.

Brad and Victoria weren‘t so lucky. After their flight left Munich late, they missed their connection in Amsterdam. It just put them too far behind, and they were eliminated.

Mel and Mike’s road to first place began in Bucharest, where Mike completed a roadblock that involved performing various gymnastics moves in a gym where Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comaneci once trained.

After quickly going through the moves, it was on to Transylvania, where the detour had them choosing between two options.

The first, called “Gypsy Moves,” involved going to a gypsy settlement, where they had to load a family’s belongings onto a cart and lead it to a new encampment.

The other choice, dubbed “Vampire Remains,” had teams going to the woods and dragging a coffin into a clearing, where they had to unlock a series of chains to open the coffin.

The Whites’ first instinct—that the Vampire Remains would be too complicated—proved true. The teams that chose it struggled, while Mel and Mike quickly packed up their gypsy cart with, among other things, furniture, a car frame, huge tires and even an old dishwasher.

In addition to the bragging rights that come with their first place finish, Mel and Mike also won a trip for two to Costa Rica.

“To say I’m proud of Mike right now is the understatement of the century,” Mel said afterward. “He’s one of the very special people that I’ve met in my life, and not just because he’s my son. But because he is special.”