Cape Coral native wins $1 million on 'The Amazing Race'

The race is over, and Tyler Adams is back home in the United States.

He's also $1 million richer.

After 21 days of globe-hopping, the Cape Coral native took home the top prize Friday on the reality TV show "The Amazing Race."

"We're about to win the 'The Amazing Race!' Adams said with a delirious grin as he and teammate Laura Pierson sprinted to the Dallas finish line wearing backpacks. "This is unbelievable!"

Adams was part of four remaining teams competing for the $1 million prize on Friday's season finale of "The Amazing Race." He'll split the money with Pierson.

"I'm never gonna forget this," Adams, 27, said on the show after winning. "This is so incredible!"

The Bishop Verot High graduate and his Cape Coral father, Jack Adams, watched the finale Friday at a New York City viewing party with the show's cast and crew.

"It's a big celebration," Jack Adams said on his cellphone over the background noise of cheers and laughter. "Everybody's excited. Everybody's crying. The whole cast is here."

Tyler Adams couldn't be reached for comment Friday night.

This season's "Amazing Race" had a blind-date theme, and some competitors were paired with potential romantic partners they'd never met before.

Together, Adams and blind date Pierson, of Los Angeles, solved one challenge after another and — earlier in the show's season — won vacations to New Zealand and South Africa.

Adams, who now lives in Santa Monica, Calif., got on the show after meeting a casting director at a California bar.

Four months later, he found himself traveling the world on "The Amazing Race" and doing odd things like making perfume in Monaco and maneuvering a wheelbarrow full of bricks through an obstacle course in Peru. The scavenger-hunt-style show was filmed in November 2014.

"I always wanted to do the Race," Adams, 27, told The News-Press earlier this week. "As adults, you can use the world as your playground and go on the ultimate scavenger hunt."

"The Amazing Race" saw his team and 10 others traveling to Japan, Thailand, Germany, Monaco, France, Namibia, The Netherlands and Peru.

Friday's finale took them back to the United States for an adventure in Texas, where they rappelled from a tower, drove monster trucks, corralled longhorns at a cattle ranch and played football at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. Adams nailed a field goal on the first try.

Adams seemed particularly excited about the trucks.

"I'm about to drive a monster truck!" he said with a grin. "This is Texas, baby!"

Adams grew up in Cape Coral and graduated in 2006 from Bishop Verot in Fort Myers. Now he works in the app-development industry and co-founded two smartphone game apps: "HORSE" and "Two Truths."

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (News-Press) (Facebook) @charlesrunnells (Twitter)