(AP) — Two former American Hockey League players have claimed the $1 million prize of CBS’ "The Amazing Race."
Bates and Anthony Battaglia were shown winning the event in a two-hour finale that aired Sunday night.
Bates Battaglia is a former AHL All-Star who played parts of six seasons in the league with the Beast of New Haven (1997-98), Toronto Marlies (2005-06, 07-09), Syracuse Crunch (2009-10) and Rochester Americans (2010-11). He also played 580 games in the National Hockey League with Carolina, Colorado, Washington and Toronto.
Anthony Battaglia played nine AHL games with the Lowell Lock Monsters in 2002-03.
Good note-taking skills turned out to be a key part of their victory after all the running, swimming and scrambling across the globe.
The finale took competitors from Edinburgh to Belfast to London to Washington, D.C., where they twice had to show a good memory for details of their voyage. At one point, their finishing positions in several past episodes translated into the combination to a briefcase containing a clue. At another, they had to line up countries in the order in which they had visited them.
At the finish line, members of the teams which had earlier been eliminated cheered the finalists as they arrived.
As host Phil Keoghan welcomed the Battaglias at the finish, he teased a bit: "You made it all the way around the world with your false teeth."
"I can buy some new ones now," said Anthony Battaglia, who has joked in the past about the false front teeth he wears as a memento of his hockey career.
"I can’t remember the last time I felt like this," said Bates Battaglia. "It hasn’t come from hockey in a long time."
