Celebrity 2025 - Week 1 recap

Week one is usually more about meeting the teams and I think we got a good idea of this year's celebrity contestants during this first leg. 

The couples had to get to Flores over 1,000km south from their start point, and quickly split into a group of action - and group of inaction.

Anita & Bal and Roman & Harleymoon quickly headed for the ferry, realising that task one was just to get off the island and to Cancun. The others were less active, with Molly & Tyler stopping to plan, while Dylan & Jackie stopped because they’d somehow already lost their map. 

“So we need to get to the A of Guatemala on this map, right?” - Molly

Dylan & Jackie are probably the most instantly loveable team, with echoes of Series 3’s Cathie and Tricia getting lost in the park at the start of their race - although without any of their energy. Full of self doubt, the mother and son duo referred to themselves as team tortoise - a name they lived up to twice, by plodding along and struggling to come out of their shells. Walking around the island to work up their nerve to approach passers by, they did little on the first day but eat a hot dog.

They did get going eventually, but mostly through the medium of high speed trains, and at the expected higher cost. Treating themselves for the success of catching a train they also spent heavily on food, and while it was fun watching the inexperienced travels debate if a hospital would give them a bed for the night, the episode gave little confidence they’ll make it to the final checkpoint, let alone come first. 

Equally fun to watch was Roman & Harleymoon , who set off at a much faster pace, but had less synchronicity as a duo. Roman put Harleymoon in charge of ‘fun’ at the start - clearly more of a planner he felt his more organised approach would work best. But despite being the first team to leave Cancun, they ended up stuck in Valladolid after working in some stables. 

The real dynamic shone through then, with Roman clearly anxious to just keep moving, while Harleymoon was happier to wait to take the faster route though Belize.

It will be interesting to see how they work together over the next few weeks but they clearly have a lot of potential as long as they support each other more than squabble. 

Like Roman & Harleymoon, Molly & Tyler took a quick job this week picking peppers in Campeche. The young couple took a little while to get going, clearly outside of their comfort zone, but were pretty competent when they got moving.

Tyler pushed for the overnight bus, saving hotel money and giving them time to work harvesting peppers. I’m not sure how the duo will do on the more disgusting jobs, but here they worked fine, if far slower than their boss Juan wanted!

Excited by their entry into Guatemala though they seemed to stop for a lie in, but I think as the race goes on they might get much more competitive.

No need to grow though for the clearly most competent team Anita & Bal! They set off like rockets despite Bal seeming to be 68 going on 200. We had him complaining about his knees, planning his funeral, talking like he might not make it past checkpoint three, yet also cracking dad jokes and sharing ghost stories on the bus.

Anita seems solely to be there to get her dad to see more of the world than just Yorkshire, so while racing along the faster Belize route they still stopped to climb the Mayian Jaguar Temple - despite Bal’s knees!

"It's the most turquoise blue sea I've ever seen. It's not like Whitley." - Bal

Entering Flores there were a few upsets, Roman & Harleymoon had their bus breakdown and seemed neck and neck with Molly & Tyler. But it wasn’t a big surprise to find Anita & Bal had massively outperformed the others, although more interesting is how (relatively) close the remaining teams are:

1st	Anita & Bal	-	100%
2nd	Roman & Harley	+23h 16m	100%
3rd	Tyler & Molly	+24h 56m	100%
4th	Dylan & Jackie	+29h 36m	100%

No budget table was provided, so we'll have to wait to see how that looks, but it feels like the team that took high priced trains everywhere might be bottom there also...

So far it certainly feels like Anita & Bal’s to win, but the gap isn’t that big in race across the world terms, and they might take longer to see the sights if they feel safe in their early lead. The two younger teams may also put on a sprint to catch up, and while you might already be writing off the loveable 'Team tortoise', Asop has a fable suggesting they might make it work out...

Think you can guess based on what we've seen so far? Get your predictions in before the show starts tonight!