Alpha exes recouple efforts on 'The Amazing Race'

Cliff Lipson/CBS

Exes Tim Sweeney and Marie Mazzochi are vying for $1 million prize on CBS show "The Amazing Race."

One reason the dating thing didn’t work out for Tim Sweeney and Marie Mazzochi, they’ll tell you, is that they’re too competitive.

“There are two alphas,” says Mazzochi. “That’s the problem.”

But after they stopped dating but remained friends, they found a way to channel that competitive energy into something potentially productive: the 23rd season of CBS’ “The Amazing Race,” which debuted Sunday night.

Sweeney and Mazzochi, who were born in Morristown, N.J., and still live in the area, scored one of the 11 spots in the race, whose winner gets a million dollars.

“Marie and I had talked about it a little for a while,” says Sweeney. “We knew we could do really well.”

Sweeney, 32, a sports marketer, was at one time drafted as a pitcher by the Washington Nationals.

But for purposes of the race, Mazzochi topped that. She’s a gym owner, kickboxing instructor and personal trainer.

“Once we knew we were on, I worked out with Marie for a couple of months,” says Sweeney. “That’s her field. I knew she could get us into the kind of shape we’d need.”

Mazzochi says she knew the show, then went back and watched past seasons more closely to get a sense what physical skills would be required.

“People who watch the show are definitely at an advantage,” she says.

It paid off, says Sweeney.

“We’re both athletic types anyway,” he says. “When we got into the competition, we didn’t have any trouble with the physical part.”

Mazzochi, 29, says they dealt with the other aspects of the race, which is also about mental agility and endurance, by “staying focused. . . . We met other teams, got to know them a little, but mostly we tried to just concentrate on what we had to do.”

During that process, Sweeney says, the alpha issue mostly worked itself out.

“I would say that in the race, she became the alpha alpha,” he says.