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Jon Montgomery, host of CTV's The Amazing Race Canada.Hand-out

All that glittered was not gold in The Amazing Race Canada finale that saw dogged determination winning out over athletic prowess.

After an arduous trek covering more than 40,000 kilometers – including stops in Hong Kong, Paris, Macau and several Canadian cities – the homegrown version of the popular reality series wrapped its second season with a nail-biter finish that produced a surprise – and rather surprised – winning team.

Take note: All spoiler alerts apply from this point onward.

Going into the final leg of The Amazing Race Canada, the competition had been whittled down to three two-person teams.

The obvious front-runners: Natalie Spooner and Meaghan Mikkelson, teammates from Canada's gold-medal winning women's Olympic hockey team and generally considered the favourites to win the globetrotting marathon.

The fiercely-competitive Natalie and Meaghan set the pace for most of the travel endurance test, winning seven of the 11 legs of the race.

Also in the running were best friends Mickey Henry and Pete Schmalz from Muskoka, Ontario.

Sure, Mickey and Pete look like they came directly from the original Woodstock concert, and went through the entire journey without winning a single leg, but they kept notching higher in the finishes with each new leg of the race.

The dark-horse team: Vancouver bartender besties Ryan and Rob, whose mere presence in the final was itself a miracle: The gutsy pair had survived two Speed Bumps and a U-Turn, and narrowly missed being booted off the competition courtesy of two non-elimination rounds.

And so it began.

The last leg kicked off with Natalie and Meaghan, who won the previous leg, departing first from Moncton to fly to Ottawa. Mickey and Pete came next and were followed by Ryan and Rob, who, as usual, just seemed grateful to still be in the game.

Upon arrival in the nation's capital, the teams were handed their first challenge, which involved kayaking on the Rideau Canal.

Mickey and Pete were first off and were racing through the choppy waters swimmingly (Mickey was apparently a white-water rafting guide at some point in his life), followed by Natalie and Meaghan, who had some degree of difficulty navigating the course.

"We're much better on frozen water," said Natalie. "Much better."

And what of Ryan and Rob? Their cab driver got lost en route to the kayaking start point, so they were last to start the race.

By the time Ryan and Rob finished their brief kayaking trip, the other two teams were already at Parliament Hill and tucking into their next task.

The challenge: Search through the library stacks at the cavernous library for the Parliamentary debate records of a certain date in Canadian history – and then race through those records to find out why that date was significant.

Impressively, Mickey and Pete were first to recognize the big news item of March 25, 1986: The first issuing of Canada's one-dollar coin, or "loonie."

Natalie and Meaghan struggled with finding the debate records correlating to their given day in history, which turned out to be the original adoption of O Canada in both English and French. The Olympian duo were still in second place, but fast on Mickey and Pete's heels.

Still in third place, Ryan and Rob were handed the date of December 15, 1964, which turned out to be the adoption of the Canadian Commonwealth flag. The Parliamentary librarian finally gave them a thumbs-up, but they appeared to be at least a half-hour behind the other two teams.

The next challenge took place at the infamous Diefenbunker, the supposedly impenetrable bomb shelter constructed at the peak of the Cold War in 1959.

Mickey and Pete arrived first to the sprawling, 100,000 square-foot facility and were told they had to search for three military toys hidden on the premises.

Think Easter Egg hunt, except with a tiny jeep, tank and helicopter in lieu of chocolate eggs.

En route to the Diefenbunker, Natalie and Meaghan's luck went from bad to worse when their cab appeared to be falling apart.

"This cannot be happening today," groaned Meaghan.

Eventually, their cab sputtered its way to the Diefenbunker parking lot.

As it happened, Mickey found all three of the military toys before Meaghan did and kept his team's first-place position intact.

After ample legwork, Natalie eventually found all three of her pieces and set off with Meaghan in pursuit of the leaders. Ryan and Rob showed up and made quick work of the search.

Next stop: The Canadian Museum of Nature, where the challenge involved ascending a rope to the top of the museum ceiling to obtain the next clue. Mickey scurried up the rope like a lemur but there was one hair-raising moment when he couldn't quite nab the clue-card from its clip.

Since Natalie had performed the Diefenbunker challenge, it was up to Meaghan to ascend the rope. As on previous legs of the race, Meagher's injured wrist slowed her down, but she grit her teeth and eventually reached the ceiling and the clue.

Ryan and Rob arrived third and, thanks to Ryan's conditioning, performed the task in short order and remained competitive in the race.

The final challenge took the teams to Ottawa's National Gallery, home of the largest collection of Canadian art in the world, where the As in the first season of The Amazing Race Canada, the whole shooting match came down to a challenge that would test the observational powers of the races.

Each of the three remaining teams were instructed to arrange paintings of landmarks and street scenes culled from their incredible journey in perfect chronological order.

Meaghan and Natalie said they knew a memory challenge was imminent and had prepared for it by making notes at the close of each leg. Ryan and Rob said they did likewise.

And since all three teams were frantically scrambling to assemble the timeline at the same time, it meant the entire race came down to which team had the most accurate memories of where they had been and what they had seen.

Mickey and Peter, showing remarkable recall abilities for two young men who resemble Willie Nelson's road crew, took to the task quickly.

Still, Mickey and Pete got it wrong upon the first inspection, as did Natalie and Meaghan. And both teams got it wrong on their respective second attempts, too.

Mickey and Pete got it right on their third try, and a few minutes later, Natalie and Meaghan finally realized there were no double-decker buses in sight during their brief stopover in Paris and got the order of paintings right.

While Ryan and Rob struggled, Mickey and Pete were first out of the National Gallery and were already imploring toward the finish line at Rideau Hall. Natalie and Meaghan were in hot pursuit.

In the final moments, Mickey and Pete ran their tails off for the final hundred yards and land on the mat to claim the grand prize.

Natalie and Meaghan finished several minutes later – holding hands for the final few yards – followed by Ryan and Rob in distant third.

By finishing first, Mickey and Pete won a year's worth of free airline travel, a truck apiece, gas for life and $250,000.

In keeping with their boundless enthusiasm throughout the race, Mickey and Pete both doffed their pants and embraced Amazing Race host Jon Montgomery in a bear hug. They also high-fived the other competitors flanking them at the finish line.

"I can't believe we did it, man," said Pete. "My life is just heading in a completely different direction!"

As for the future: "Best friends for life," said Pete, who also told his race partner, "I love you, man." Mickey responded: "I love you, too."

And in the post-race interview, even the team that came in second place seemed fine with Mickey and Pete winning The Amazing Race Canada.

"They're just nice sweet guys," said Natalie.

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