S33: Ryan Ferguson & Dusty Harris

[Whimsy]

This will be another pair of two best friends competing on The Amazing Race. Ryan Ferguson and Dusty Harris hail from Columbia, Missouri.
 

[Lovecat]

Ryan Ferguson has a pretty amazing story.  He served almost 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit before being exonerated and released.  His story has been on Dateline, 48 Hours, etc., and he’s become an advocate for the wrongfully convicted since he’s been free.

[iMonrey]

OMG Ryan Ferguson! I followed his story for years and I remember the day he finally was released from prison. What an amazing - and horrifically sad - story. He was basically framed by crooked cops and a crooked prosecutor.

[Writing Wrongs]

I live in Columbia and it was a big deal. I will be interested to see this.

[absolutelyido]

I was thrilled to see Ryan on the race, just to see that he seems to be happy and thriving. For those who are interested, there is a Netflix documentary of his story called Dream Killer. What happened to him could have easily crushed him, so I'm glad to see his resiliency.

[RunningMarket]

Just watched Dream/Killer last night. Perhaps due to being on the west coast of Canada, but I had never heard of Ryan Ferguson until he showed up on TAR. The documentary is pretty good - his parents (his father in particular) never gave up, which is why Ryan is a free man today.

[bearcatfan]

Kind of wild to think during the time the race was in limbo Ryan became a millionaire. Deservedly so. I hadn’t heard of him prior to this season. I can’t understand how that prosecutor hasn’t been disbarred. Withholding evidence is a huge no no. 

[xfuse]

On 1/24/2022 at 12:45 PM, RunningMarket said:

Just watched Dream/Killer last night. Perhaps due to being on the west coast of Canada, but I had never heard of Ryan Ferguson until he showed up on TAR. The documentary is pretty good - his parents (his father in particular) never gave up, which is why Ryan is a free man today.

Thanks for mentioning the documentary. I generally don't watch  documentaries. I tend to turn them of after ten minutes. One hour and fifty minutes later I looked around to see where the time has gone.  I found it so sad for his father, for him and for anyone depending on the justice system. I know he doesn't need the money but I would be happy if he won.

I like that they keep bringing it up on the race because it does need to be said so many times that he did spend those ten years in prison for something he didn't do. It needs to remind people that he spent that time in prison because of a corrupt justice system. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by xfuse

[roamyn]

On 2/20/2022 at 8:10 AM, xfuse said:

I like that they keep bringing it up on the race because it does need to be said so many times that he did spend those ten years in prison for something he didn't do. It needs to remind people that he spent that time in prison because of a corrupt justice system. 

Not to mention others that are wrongfully imprisoned.

[Spunkygal]

Dusty reminds me of Ernest T Bass from the old Andy Griffith show, especially when he’s screaming.

[Mittengirl]

Dusty doesn’t seem like a bad person, just not someone I would want to hang out with.  He just doesn’t seem like a calm, go-with-the-flow kind of guy.  He seems like the guy that can’t sit back and relax; the one that is always tapping his foot or drumming his fingers on the table and is horrible to watch a game “his team” is playing.  I don’t even want to think about playing a board/card game against him.  Even church basement bingo.

[ProfCrash]

Does anyone know why only Dusty is doing interviews? Ryan isn’t participating in interviews.

[seacliffsal]

Opinion only and I am not trying to answer for Ryan-I would bet Ryan is uncomfortable with attention.  He probably spent his time in prison trying to NOT get attention and to just fade away so as to not attract unwanted notice and attention.  

[ProfCrash]

It just seems weird that he went on the Race and has pretty much ignored all the media type stuff. Raquel has been less out there then Cayla but she has done some things. 

I also wonder if the show ended up honking off Ryan because so much of the emphasis seemed to end up on Dusty and not Ryan. But I think that Dusty is a stronger, more vocal personality then Ryan. And I am not so certain Ryan wanted to spend all his time talking about his incarceration. 

I don't know, it just feels really strange. Like Ryan was doing this for Dusty and that it wasn't for Ryan. Ryan had the money from the settlement and seems to be happy with his current life. He didn't need to run the Race. It doesn't seem like it was a life goal or a dream. 

(shrugs) 

No clue, just a weird dynamic. 

[zapper]

I can't help but to think of Dusty as the cliched football coach at halftime. 

"we're gonna half to do some more winning, it's not that we are doing badly, we certainly made mistakes, but not bad ones. we just need to minimize our losing aspects in comparison to how much the other teams are losing. So more winning and less losing will turn it for us. Oh yeah, that would be it for sure."

That sort of thing. For me, once I started looking at him in that view, it became almost enjoyable.

[bearcatfan]

Dusty said on one podcast that he wants to run the race again just to prove to himself he could win. He even said if he win, he would donate his winnings. He also feels that if the same 3 final 3 ran 9 times, each team would win 3 times. He felt they were very evenly matched. 

[ProfCrash]

8 minutes ago, bearcatfan said:

Dusty said on one podcast that he wants to run the race again just to prove to himself he could win. He even said if he win, he would donate his winnings. He also feels that if the same 3 final 3 ran 9 times, each team would win 3 times. He felt they were very evenly matched. 

Dusty is giving him and Ryan too much credit. They are fine only when there are a lot of physical tasks. The fact that Dusty has yet to figure out that they did not perform great on the more mental tasks. 

They were good but not great. 

[Netfoot]

33 minutes ago, ProfCrash said:

They were good but not great. 

I'd have been OK with their winning, since they weren't terrible racers. But I'd have preferred the FAs or K&P, and that's how it turned out.

[bearcatfan]

40 minutes ago, ProfCrash said:

Dusty is giving him and Ryan too much credit. They are fine only when there are a lot of physical tasks. The fact that Dusty has yet to figure out that they did not perform great on the more mental tasks. 

They were good but not great. 

They only finished about 20 minutes behind second place and they had to have spent more than 20 minutes at the elevators. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that they could win. 

[ProfCrash]

3 minutes ago, bearcatfan said:

They only finished about 20 minutes behind second place and they had to have spent more than 20 minutes at the elevators. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that they could win. 

I know it helps Dusty to think they made up the time but we saw when they arrived that every one else was done. It is possible that they knocked the pinata and foley task out super fast, had better traffic, and then got the memory test on the first try and finished 20 minutes behind but I am going to remain skeptical that that is how it played out. My husband wanted to have a clock with how far the two of them were behind because we never saw them at the same spot as the other teams after the initial task.

They were strong in physical tasks but average in mental tasks. 

I doubt that they willbe back. I am not sure that Ryan would do it again. Maybe a Dusty and Cayla team?

[SG429]

19 hours ago, bearcatfan said:

Dusty said on one podcast that he wants to run the race again just to prove to himself he could win.

After the restart they were racing against a diminished number of teams and should have done better than their consistent middle of the packlet. Against a full field with the traditional transpo challenges, detour choices miles from each other, etc., Dusty may have imploded earlier.

[Scatterbrained]

Perhaps Ryan is on another reality show right now?  (Survivor/Big Brother?)

[xfuse]

On 3/4/2022 at 10:52 AM, ProfCrash said:

I don't know, it just feels really strange. Like Ryan was doing this for Dusty and that it wasn't for Ryan. Ryan had the money from the settlement and seems to be happy with his current life.

I'm not 100 percent positive but I don't think he had his settlement when they started the race.  I read somewhere that the race was suppose to be Ryan and his father but his father wasn't well enough to run the race. That was why Dusty was brought in. Even in the documentary you could see that Ryan was a low key guy. 

[Lady Calypso]

On 3/4/2022 at 9:22 AM, ProfCrash said:

I don't know, it just feels really strange. Like Ryan was doing this for Dusty and that it wasn't for Ryan. Ryan had the money from the settlement and seems to be happy with his current life. He didn't need to run the Race. It doesn't seem like it was a life goal or a dream. 

That makes sense to me. Ryan emphasized in the finale that Dusty kept in contact with Ryan when he was in prison while everyone else seemed to write him off. That probably meant a whole lot to Ryan that he had such a great friend in Dusty that he would stick by him for those 10 years.

So if he was doing this more for Dusty, it's understandable. Him doing the Race for Dusty is such a small thing he could do after the massive thing Dusty did for him. 

Although, I did just read that Ryan was contacted by the show to apply (makes sense) and Ryan chose Dusty to be his partner. But, again, Ryan was probably not doing it for the fame, but for the adventure with someone who had a massive impact on his life. Dusty may have just enjoyed the experience in a different way than Ryan did. 

I'm actually watched Dream/Killer a couple of nights ago and it's such a heartbreaking story. I'm glad that Ryan's family, but especially his father, fought hard for him to get out. 

[ProfCrash]

I know Dusty had said that Ryan was suppose to run with his Dad and his Dad was unable to run. Ryan ran with Dusty because Dusty stuck with him through everything. And I get that. But Ryan never seemed to be into the show the way Dusty was or Ryan is just very practiced in hiding his feelings from everyone that we don’t see him as invested because he was hiding it. 

It just felt like Ryan was cool with winning and would have been fine losing. It felt like he was there for the ride and Dusty was full invested in the race.

I liked them fine as a team and was happy to have them on the show, I just never got the feeling that Ryan really cared that much. Dusty was totally into it. Ryan seemed amused by Dusty. 

[ByaNose]

21 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

That makes sense to me. Ryan emphasized in the finale that Dusty kept in contact with Ryan when he was in prison while everyone else seemed to write him off. That probably meant a whole lot to Ryan that he had such a great friend in Dusty that he would stick by him for those 10 years.

So if he was doing this more for Dusty, it's understandable. Him doing the Race for Dusty is such a small thing he could do after the massive thing Dusty did for him. 

Although, I did just read that Ryan was contacted by the show to apply (makes sense) and Ryan chose Dusty to be his partner. But, again, Ryan was probably not doing it for the fame, but for the adventure with someone who had a massive impact on his life. Dusty may have just enjoyed the experience in a different way than Ryan did. 

I'm actually watched Dream/Killer a couple of nights ago and it's such a heartbreaking story. I'm glad that Ryan's family, but especially his father, fought hard for him to get out. 

Dusty said he was a last minute replacement. Ryan was supposed to run the race with his Dad but he had gotten injured. The show wanted Ryan nevertheless. He then asked Dusty to run the race like a week before they started. Which turned into something different because Ryan became the quiet one and Dusty was, well, Dusty. LOL!!!!

[Hanahope]

Watched Dream/Killer last night for more info about Ryan.  I understand why TAR might have wanted Ryan's dad to run the race with him, but I could tell the dad would never have been able to do it, he was definitely not in any shape to do so, even more so than Akbar and Sheri. 

Its awful what happened to Ryan, but he was very fortunate to have a very supportive family with the ability and means to help him, and lets face it, he is white.  all that gave him a leg up on proving his innocence.  and if it was so difficult for him, one can imagine how impossible a task it is for people who are poor, have less family means, ability and support, and are not white.  

I'm very impressed that Ryan seems to have come through the experience as well as he did, and he still has issues.  I think one reason he skipped the finale party and interviews was probably a desire to step away from the spotlight for a bit, especially after his recent civil victory.