Amazing Race's Keith and Whitney: We Shouldn't Have Fought With Shelley and Nici

One mat spat was all it took to get Keith and Whitney eliminated from The Amazing Race. While waiting for a clue, the Survivor alums got into it with Shelley and Nici, who weren't going to let bygones be bygones: The mother-daughter duo U-Turned Keith and Whitney, who struggled through the hat-tassel-twirling Detour. "I regret talking back to [Shelley]," Keith tells TVGuide.com. "I was just caught in the moment ... and as soon as I saw there was a U-Turn, I knew they would use it on us." Check out what else the couple has to say about the fight, postponing their wedding for the show and how Race compares to Survivor.

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What was it like watching your slow demise?
Whitney: It was hard to watch. It is what it is. It was much more intense at the time than it is now. When we decided to do this, we said the No. 1 thing was to have fun. That's really hard for two competitive people. When we get in game mode, we're super intense.
Keith: We had a lot of fun. It was an amazing adventure. ... Even though we lost, we still wanted to finish it because we were enjoying the fact that we were getting to do this. We didn't want to give up even though we knew we were more than likely last. We weren't going to wait for Phil [Keoghan] to come find us.
They showed the time elapsed was 2 hours and 9 minutes. Was that from the start of the Detour or from when you came back to do it the second time?
Whitney: That was from the start of the Detour. When we came back to do it, I think I knocked it out in like 10 minutes. It was really quick. It got dark, but there wasn't really as much time that went by as you would think.
Do you regret not picking the tea Detour from the start?
Whitney: [Laughs] Every day! Every single day! We really picked our Detours poorly. You don't really know what you're going to be doing, so you pick one that sounds right for you, and we consistently picked the wrong ones.
Why didn't you switch sooner?
Whitney: I actually wanted to, but the other one was really far away. You don't see how far away it was. That one was the better one to do. This one was pretty close to the U-Turn. I wanted to change and Keith didn't. We just let a little too much time go by before we switched, but we were U-Turned. It didn't really matter.
Keith: The head-spinning one was probably the better challenge if you were able to do it. That's the simplest way to put it. This was close to the U-Turn, so if we had gotten it faster, we would've gotten to the U-Turn first, obviously. No team can do it all, but it depends where you are in the race. If there's a U-Turn involved, that just snowballs.

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You were expecting to get U-Turned after your fight with Shelley and Nici.
Whitney: Yeah, I knew we were going to get U-Turned. We knew they wouldn't play strategically. They're not that type of people. They weren't going to make the smart decision; they were just going to go off of emotion.Keith: After that confrontation, Whitney said, "We're definitely getting U-Turned or we need to get there first to U-Turn them." And I said, "No, we're not going to U-Turn them. We're going to U-Turn whoever makes sense strategically." I'm not going to waste my U-Turn on emotion. If I had gotten there first, I would've wanted to U-Turn Misti and Jim because they have The Save and I need to get The Save out of play.Whitney: Absolutely. There's no way you would've let me go on emotion. That was my feeling at the time, but as the day went on, it wouldn't have made sense. They were going to explode on each other eventually. At that point, I knew they weren't strong competitors. They were competitive, but not strong.What happened there exactly? She obviously thought you, Whitney, weren't close enough to Keith to get the next clue.
Keith: Everybody found where to give our hides to at the same time, as you saw. We all got back to the mat at the same time and they weren't ready to give all of us our clues, so Shelley and Nici started hugging the mat. I stood there right in line and was waiting for the clue while Whitney grabbed our bags because they made us set our bags down, and she came running over to me. Every team was right there, so there was no way she could physically be right next to me. She was being blocked and that's when Shelley started grabbing me on the arm, trying to get me off the mat. I overreacted. I got angry and I was yelling, "You can't touch me! You're not allowed to touch me!" You're not allowed to touch other teams; that's in the rules. And then she started screaming back at me and that's when I went off. I should've just let them go in front of me because it didn't give me any advantage in the Race. Instead of overreacting, I should've just said, "Go ahead. You can be two seconds in front of me because it literally makes no difference." That's what I should've done. Whitney: We should've handled it better. We should've been the bigger team and said, "Go ahead."

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We know from two weeks ago that they're very emotional and prone to outbursts, to say the least. What was your relationship with them like before this?
Whitney: I think they butted heads with almost every team. That whole day, it led up to that point. We were already frustrated with them. They tried me from going through the customs line. They kept trying to tell people not to let us through. That's just not cool. But they were that way to everybody.The extra clip online showed that you used your U-Turn on Amy and Maya. 
Whitney: Yeah, we just put up there because at that point, we knew we were gone, so it didn't matter.Keith: There was a little chance that they might've still been doing the twirling because it was pretty tough.How does The Amazing Race compare to Survivor?
Keith: For me, it's a lot more difficult. There's no downtime. You're constantly racing and even when you have a little break, you have to wash your clothes, take a shower. It's really not a break at all. I overanalyze everything, so my brain never got a break. At any point, you make a mistake and that could be the end of your race. For me, it was really hard. I had no mental break. It was constant stress.We saw that with the treasure hunt the first leg.
Whitney: Oh, yeah! I would totally agree with that. In a way, Survivor's harder because it takes away all of your comforts period. It's more of a mental game. Amazing Race is everything. It's mental, social and a really hard physical game as well. It's much harder.You postponed your wedding to do the show, but you've since gotten married. Congratulations!
Whitney: Thank you!Was the Race still worth it even though you didn't win the $1 million for your honeymoon?
Whitney: It's OK! We bought our own honeymoon! [Laughs] We're really glad we did this. We have no regrets about postponing our wedding. How often in life can you go around the world, see these different places, do these different things? It's a really huge opportunity.Keith: Just to be blessed with being asked is amazing in and of itself. Going to these places, obviously, is No. 1, but the things you get to do in those countries are one in a million. People can go to these places, but some of the things we get to do are so unique and a lot of people won't ever get that chance. I mean, doing the torch-building in the Shetland Islands was so cool. It's something I never thought I'd be able to do: build a Viking torch.Or twirl a hat in Morocco.
Whitney: We're not gonna talk about that! [Laughs] The Amazing Race airs Fridays at 8/7c on CBS. Check out our behind-the-scenes footage from the start line:(Full disclosure: TVGuide.com is owned by CBS.)