Brothers compete in 'Amazing Race'

A Texas State University student and Buda native and his brother are currently featured on the 35th season of CBS’ The Amazing Race, competing for a chance to win $1 million.

The show premise is that 13 teams of two compete in a race around the world, with a limited budget to see who can reach the final destination first.

Yeremi Hykel, a senior at TXSTs McCoy College of Business, and Liam Hykel had a strained relationship that was remedied during their experience training for and competing in this strenuous race.

Forced to cooperate and communicate as teammates opened the door for use of these same principles to mend frayed brotherly bonds.

Yeremi Hykel said he wanted to be on the show because he thought it was “amazing” but also because he saw how the challenges were a great way to foster relationship development amongst teammates.

This interested him he said because his own relationship with his brother had been deteriorating for years.

“I saw it as an opportunity for us to come together and challenge our relationship,” Hykel said. “See if through the fire and flames we can develop something that we haven’t had for so long.”

Hykel said the impact of the competition on his relationship with his brother was incredible.

“We dove into parts of our lives that we never talked about,” Hykel said. “We talked about difficult things that happened, not just in our family as we were growing up and how it affected us, but a lot of things that happened between us, as brothers, that affected our relationship negatively.”

Hykel described an inspirational moment in their journey, one that was a true turning point for the brothers’ relationship.

He said that throughout the race, the teams rarely see the other competitors, so they’re unaware of their position until they reach a checkpoint.

“We made it to this checkpoint, and we thought we were doing really well, and we were told that we were in last place,” Hykel said. “After that happened, we ended up being able to overcome it by continuing to … push our bodies and our minds to the limit.” He added that the level of pride he felt for his brother in that moment brought tears to his eyes.

The competition took the duo on a worldwide adventure, and although Hykel couldn’t relay the locations featured on upcoming episodes, he said that Thailand was incredible.

“It was beautiful. It was so different. The culture there is so different then it is here,” Hykel said, adding that it gave him a bit of a culture shock, but it was exciting nonetheless. “At one point, we had to take a Tuk Tuk, which is a three wheeled kind of vehicle with this little overhead canopy. They just drive you through the streets, and there’s not that many traffic laws, so they’re just zooming in and out of traffic–around people, around cars.”

Hykel said they had an extensive training process in preparation for the race.

The first leg of training involved facetime because Yeremi lives here and Liam lives in Wyoming.

“We would FaceTime during the week, whenever we had time, and we would watch seasons together,” Hykel said. “We would watch them and analyze the challenges. We would analyze the relationship quarrels between teams and see how we would do things differently … As it got closer to use leaving for the competition, I flew Liam to Texas, and he spent a month with me. We did different things … We would go on runs together. We would hang out together. We tried to put ourselves in challenging competitions that forced us to have to communicate really fast paced.”

Competition and athletic skill were nothing new to the pair, as both Yeremi and Liam were involved in sports throughout their lives.

“I played basketball, baseball. I swam. I played track,” Hykel said. “I went to the United States Marine Corps, and I became a Marine. So, I do have a pretty extensive background in physical activity, and so does my brother as well– being in the Navy.”

If you’re interested in seeing how the Hykel brothers’ adventure unfolds, tune in to CBS at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday’s for The Amazing Race.