When Jonathon Braun and Jesse Harink crossed the finish line to win season 11 of the Amazing Race Canada, it was a surreal moment for the close friends from Vancouver. “You run this incredibly tough race with so many strong competitors, and you hit that mat and you realize that you not only finished the race, but finished in first. It’s just wild,” said Harink, who along with Braun, spoke to CTV News the day after the finale aired. The two men first met at a Vancouver gym. “We just started to develop a friendship that led outside of the gym, and (he) just turned into truly one of my closest friends and someone I really appreciate,” said Harink. Braun, who is a lawyer, suggested he and Harink, who works in HR, make an application video for the Amazing Race Canada season 11. “He was just such an enthusiastic yes, which just solidified more why he’s the perfect teammate,” said Braun, who is an Amazing Race super fan. He had been rejected by the show before, but this time, the friends were invited to be contestants. The show began taping in April. Right out of the gate, Braun and Harink were dominant. And that put a target on their back. “The other teams started coming for us hard. But honestly, that made us want to succeed even more,” said Braun. “We would have targeted us too if we were in their shoes,” said Harink. “So, we had no animosity with people constantly coming after us. We’re like, ‘We get it.’” Along the way, the two friends got to visit parts of Canada they would never have seen otherwise. “We got to go to the Arctic Ocean. Like, that is so cool,” said Braun. “And I’ve always wanted to go to Newfoundland. And so seeing that, it was just so special.” After the finale taped in May, Braun and Harink had to keep their win a secret from family and friends. “If we ruined the surprise for them, we wouldn’t have been able to see their joy and their genuine shocked reactions,” said Braun. They are the first team from B.C. to win the Amazing Race Canada. “And it was cool that in second place, we have Grace who also lives in Vancouver and her brother Joe who lives in Prince George. So B.C. rocked the game,” said Braun. The men are also proud to take home the prize for Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ community. “Growing up, I was always told be more subdued, be more chill, don’t scream. And so getting the chance to show that you can be this unabashedly queer, happy, flamboyant person, but that’s actually not a weakness – that’s a superpower,” said Harink. As winners, the friends took home $250,000, new vehicles and a trip around the world, along with several other trips they won for finishing first in individual legs of the race. “It’s been a busy year for travel already. We’ve been going pretty hard. But we’re starting to get our mind around some of those first trips that we are looking to take,” said Harink. “I’m going to use the vehicle to drive up to Whistler and Squamish a lot, that’s amazing,” added Braun. Harink has memorialized their time on the show with a tattoo of a promo photograph that was taken before the race began, of his arm around Braun. “Jonathan is one of the most amazing people in the world. I knew I wanted to have this captured,” said Harink. “To walk out of this experience with a best friend and even a deeper connection, we’re so lucky.”
