These guys are the actual deal.
Two brothers from Bay Ridge are reaching their lifelong dream of competing on the “The Amazing Race” — a feat seven years within the making.
Nick, 32, and Mike Fiorito, 28, make up one of many 14 groups competing on the at present airing thirty seventh season of the CBS actuality competitors present, ominously dubbed the “Season of Surprises.”
“It’s surreal,” Mike mentioned. “It was a lifelong dream come true. We’re still pinching ourselves about it.”
Final week, the brothers survived the second episode of the present by the pores and skin of their enamel after being compelled to separate up for the “Intersection” problem, which noticed Mike work with a stranger from one other group to maintain time with a Japanese drummer.
Mike and Nick narrowly survived elimination, however are eagerly heading into episode three which airs Wednesday night — notably with “Brooklyn” branded caps on their heads.
“We’re a rare breed. Brooklyn makes us who we are,” mentioned Nick.
The present is famend for being mentally and bodily exhausting, however the pair have been primed for the toll — they spent almost a decade coaching and learning for his or her shot on the $1 million prize.
Nick and Mike submitted 5 audition tapes and made it to the ultimate spherical of casting 3 times earlier than they have been lastly plucked for the competitors — a dedication even CBS representatives admitted was uncommon.
“The producers were probably sick of us and just saw that we were relentless and kept coming back after every ‘no’ that we got,” Nick joked throughout an interview with The Submit.
That tenacity, nonetheless, was precisely what led the brothers to be solid on this season of their beloved TV present, which they’d envisioned themselves competing on since they have been younger youngsters watching together with their dad and mom.
Nick and Mike first tried their arms at auditioning for the present again in 2018 — they usually boldly stop their jobs as an accountant and at a tech startup for the possibility.
Though it harm, the preliminary rejection solely fueled the Brooklyn brothers to dive headfirst into their mission.
The pair whipped up an intense coaching regime for each their brains and their our bodies, which included Crossfit, escape rooms, salsa classes, map navigations and even driving a guide automotive.
“We had to learn stick shift, which is obviously something that you do not use in Brooklyn, New York. Having a stick shift car is a terrible idea here, but on the race, it’s one of the producers favorite things to throw in theres, so we knew that we needed to learn that, and that was a challenging but comical experience,” Nick mentioned.
Crucially, the brothers grew to become college students of the “The Amazing Race” — they rewatched each episode from each season and meticulously famous every problem and puzzle within the Holy Grail of spreadsheets.
“We tried to find patterns to see, ‘How many memory challenges are there?’ and ‘Were there certain parts of the season where they tend to go heavier in a certain type of challenge?’ We wanted to leave no stone unturned in terms of preparing for the race,” Mike defined, admitting that the observe was a type of “pretty extreme hyper preparation.”
That dedication bled into the brothers’ lives outdoors of their coaching, as effectively — after quitting their jobs, Nick and Mike went into enterprise collectively.
They based “Blankets of Hope,” a nonprofit that companions with faculties throughout the nation to connect handwritten letters to blankets that are then distribtued to the nation’s homeless.
In 2023, additionally they launched the “BestSelf University” podcast, which explores success tales of athletes, lecturers and extra and runs out of their Business Metropolis workplace.
By the point the brothers have been prepared to fireside off their fifth “The Amazing Race” try, they realized they’d a very completely different bond then they did seven years earlier after they first auditioned.
“We realized more than anything is it is a relationship show and we had a lot to figure out in our own relationship over those years of applying. Over those years we really figured out who we were as people, and we were able to articulate that more clearly as the years went on. And I think that was why we actually made it on,” Nick theorized.
“We’re brothers, business partners and best friends. We literally spend more time together than we do in our own wives.”
Nick and Mike couldn’t reveal a lot about their expertise on the present — the third of episode airs Wednesday night — however teased that they may have put extra salsa dancing courses on their coaching regime.
