The Amazing Race's Natalie Bassingthwaighte reveals unseen medical emergency: 'Broken'

From Grant Denyer’s intense heatstroke on last year’s season to Ian Thorpe’s reported injury earlier this year, The Amazing Race has proven to be one of the most physically demanding reality shows on Australian TV. While they may have only spent a few days racing around the world, Natalie Bassingthwaighte and her sister Melinda Sheldrick have revealed that they also suffered a medical emergency during filming which never aired on TV.

The duo, who were eliminated during Tuesday night’s episode in Salta, northwest Argentina, tell Yahoo Lifestyle that Mel broke “a couple of bones in her foot” at the very start of the competition.

“Mel actually fell over within the first hour of the race and battled on like a bloody trooper, she was so amazing,” Nat shares. “Don't get me wrong, she got such great care from the crew and everything like that, but we didn't realise how bad it was.”

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The Rogue Traders frontwoman jokes that she’s glad they didn’t air the moment because she was “very competitive and not compassionate at all”, but Mel was a “legend” and wanted to continue in the race for their charity Black Dog Institute.

“Towards the end [of the day] when she took her shoe off, we were like, ‘Oh my god, it's so bruised!’,” Nat recalls. “And we didn’t realise until we got home that she'd actually broken it. I think we just thought it was a swollen ankle.”

“They gave me all the medical care possible, but I just was basically in denial,” Mel adds. “I was like, there is nothing that's going to stop me from going as far as we possibly can. Life is hard, and mental health is a struggle, and it's way harder than a swollen foot. So I was not going to stop.”

Why Nat didn't compete with her partner

Nat shares that when she was asked to appear on The Amazing Race, there was “no one else” she wanted to compete with other than her sister Mel.

“It had to be Mel,” she says. “Mel’s the biggest fan of the show, probably bigger than anyone on the planet. If I picked someone else I’d be disowned as a sister! I know this has been a bit of a dream for Mel for a very long time.”

“100 per cent, I've been watching the show since I was little,” Mel adds. “My uncle and I always said, ‘One day, we’d love to do this race together!’. And I never in a million years thought I would actually get the opportunity, so I'm so grateful.”

While viewers have questioned why Nat didn’t compete alongside her partner Pip Roth, who she went public with in November 2023, the Alive hitmaker says she wanted to keep her relationship out of the spotlight.

“I think you need to keep your relationship nice and close and protected away from media eyes, especially in the early stages,” she remarks.

How the show impacted Nat and Mel's relationship

Nat and Mel describe their experience on the reality show as “the adventure of a lifetime” and admit that they’d love to return for another chance.

“I think the beautiful thing about The Amazing Race is you're doing it together. It’s such teamwork and you really do have to act as a team,” she says.

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“The bond that my sister and I share normally is amazing, but I think this show took it to another level. It’s about teamwork, collaboration, not getting everything your own way, but just really supporting one another and I think there's a real beauty in that.

“We would do it again in a heartbeat, 100 per cent. It was just amazing.”

The Amazing Race Australia: Celebrity Edition continues Sunday at 7pm and Mondays at 7.30pm on 10 and 10 Play

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