The Amazing Race 8

The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition
The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition logo
Season Run	September 27 – December 13, 2005
Filming dates	July 7 – July 31, 2005
No. of Episodes	11
Winning team	Nick, Alex, Megan and Tommy Linz
Season Stats
Continents visited	1
Countries visited	4
States visited	12
Cities visited	50
No. of legs	11
Distance traveled	11,000 mi (18,000 km)
Season chronology
← Previous Season 7 Next → Season 9

The Amazing Race 8 (also known as The Amazing Race: Family Edition) was the eighth installment of the US reality television show The Amazing Race. Previous installments of The Amazing Race featured pairs of adults with a pre-existing relationship but The Amazing Race 8 featured ten families of four and allowed the participation of minors as young as eight years old. (This family format had a lukewarm reception and the series returned to the original format of teams of two adults for subsequent seasons.) Filming ran from July 7, 2005, to July 31, 2005. The show premiered on Tuesday, September 27, 2005, and concluded on Tuesday, December 13, 2005.

Siblings Nick, Alex, Megan, and Tommy Linz were the winners of this season. This is the last of four consecutive seasons in which the winning teams consisted of at least one man and one woman. At 19 and 21 years of age respectively, Tommy and Megan became the youngest male and female to win the US series (Starr Spangler of Season 13 later equaled Megan's record).

A DVD set of this season was released on October 23, 2012, via Amazon.com's CreateSpace program.

The eighth season of The Amazing Race spanned 11,000 miles (18,000 km), the shortest route of the series. This race placed less emphasis on international travel as numerous legs were contained within the continental United States, and all race locations were inside North America. Panama and Costa Rica were countries included in the race for the first time. Filming took place between July 7 and July 31, 2005.

Route markers were colored yellow and white with black lining, similar to the yellow and white route markers of Season one (and in contrast to the yellow and red markers used in all other seasons). As with The Amazing Race 7, the winners of this season were revealed in an online betting scandal before the airing of the final episode.

For this race, the supplied credit card covered not only airfare but also gasoline. Previously, gasoline had to be purchased with the supplied cash. The rule change was made necessary by the fact that most of the transportation takes place in automobiles rather than airplanes.

The limits on individual roadblock attempts, found in season six and seven, were lifted for this season. Furthermore, some roadblocks in this edition required the participation of two team members. Also, for the first time since season five, a mid-race leg (specifically, leg 4) was aired as not having a roadblock.