These guys are finally facing reality.
Two brothers from Bay Ridge are achieving their lifelong dream of competing on the “The Amazing Race” — a feat seven years in the making.
Nick, 32, and Mike Fiorito, 28, make up one of the 14 teams competing on the currently airing 37th season of the CBS reality competition show, ominously dubbed the “Season of Surprises.”
“It’s surreal,” Mike said. “It was a lifelong dream come through. We’re still pinching ourselves about it.”
Last week, the brothers survived the second episode of the show through the skin of their teeth after being forced to split up for the “Intersection” challenge, which saw Mike work with a stranger from another team to keep time with a Japanese drummer.
Mike and Nick narrowly survived elimination, but are eagerly heading into episode three which airs Wednesday evening — notably with “Brooklyn” branded caps on their heads.
“We’re a rare breed. Brooklyn makes us who we are,” said Nick.
The show is renowned for being mentally and physically exhausting, but the pair were primed for the toll — they spent nearly a decade training and studying for their shot at the $1 million prize.
Nick and Mike submitted five audition tapes and made it to the final round of casting three times before they were finally plucked for the competition — a dedication even CBS representatives admitted was unusual.
“The producers were probably sick of us and just saw that we were relentless and kept coming back after every ‘no’ that we got,” Nick joked during an interview with The Post.
That tenacity, however, was exactly what led the brothers to be cast on this season of their beloved TV show, which they had envisioned themselves competing on since they were young kids watching along with their parents.
Nick and Mike first tried their hands at auditioning for the show back in 2018 — and they boldly quit their jobs as an accountant and at a tech startup for the chance.
Although it hurt, the initial rejection only fueled the Brooklyn brothers to dive headfirst into their mission.
The pair whipped up an intense training regime for both their brains and their bodies, which included Crossfit, escape rooms, salsa lessons, map navigations and even driving a manual car.
“We had to learn stick shift, which is obviously something that you do not use in Brooklyn, New York. Having a stick shift car is a terrible idea here, but on the race, it’s one of the producers favorite things to throw in theres, so we knew that we needed to learn that, and that was a challenging but comical experience,” Nick said.
Crucially, the brothers became students of the “The Amazing Race” — they rewatched every episode from every season and meticulously noted each challenge and puzzle in the Holy Grail of spreadsheets.
“We tried to find patterns to see, ‘How many memory challenges are there?’ and ‘Were there certain parts of the season where they tend to go heavier in a certain type of challenge?’ We wanted to leave no stone unturned in terms of preparing for the race,” Mike explained, admitting that the practice was a form of “pretty extreme hyper preparation.”
That dedication bled into the brothers’ lives outside of their training, as well — after quitting their jobs, Nick and Mike went into business together.
They founded “Blankets of Hope,” a nonprofit that partners with schools across the country to attach handwritten letters to blankets which are then distribtued to the nation’s homeless.
In 2023, they also launched the “BestSelf University” podcast, which explores success stories of athletes, academics and more and runs out of their Industry City office.
By the time the brothers were ready to fire off their fifth “The Amazing Race” attempt, they realized they had a completely different bond then they did seven years earlier when they first auditioned.
“We realized more than anything is it is a relationship show and we had a lot to figure out in our own relationship over those years of applying. Over those years we really figured out who we were as people, and we were able to articulate that more clearly as the years went on. And I think that was why we actually made it on,” Nick theorized.
“We’re brothers, business partners and best friends. We literally spend more time together than we do in our own wives.”
Nick and Mike couldn’t reveal much about their experience on the show — the third of episode airs Wednesday evening — but teased that they could have put more salsa dancing classes on their training regime.
