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Local resident takes part in Wipeout Canada

JULIE BERTRAND/Independent reporter

When Andrea Muhlbach heard that the new Canadian version of Wipeout was looking for contestants, she immediately applied.

Against the odds that her husband Larry might not agree because of risks involved and despite the fact that she did not like several questions in the application form, she still went ahead, thanks to a couple of glasses of wine, and completed the application.

Luckily for her, the judges liked her application.

“They gave me a phone call anyway, and I think it was because of my job,” explained Muhlbach.

For the last nine years, she was the herd manager of a local dairy farm, before recently getting a new job at the town’s veterinary clinic.

“Usually, the unusual job gets you in. There are not a lot of women out there that work on dairy farms. It’s intriguing to some people,” said Muhlbach.

After a long day spent waiting for her chance at auditioning in front of the judges in Calgary, Muhlbach got the call saying she had been chosen.

Moreover, the episode she would appear in had a theme: East vs. West.

“In the East group, there were lobster fishermen, lumberjacks, Toronto businessmen and a potato girl from P.E.I.,” said Muhlbach.

“On our side, there was a salmon girl and a hippie from Vancouver, a skateboarder, a cowboy from Camrose, a girl that works at a coal mine, a buffalo rancher from Edson, then, of course, me as the cowgirl.”

Before leaving for the filming, Muhlbach tried to train herself a little bit.

“I went running around town and if I saw an obstacle, I would jump over it,” said Muhlbach.

“There’s a nice railing behind the Stettler Hotel and the liquor store. I jumped over that to practice for the sweeper. It didn’t help.”

The episode was filmed in Argentina last October.

“It was filmed near Buenos Aires and it’s the only place I got to see. We were down there for a week and it was hard to plan anything because we didn’t know when the taping was going to be,” said Muhlbach.

She doesn’t know when her episode will be on and she cannot disclose what happened during the episode.

“It should be a hilarious show. In a normal episode, once you’re out, you’re out,” said Muhlbach.

“But because ours was more a team effort because it was east vs. west, we got to come back and we held banners and we cheered on our teammates.”

While this apparently did not give her the bug to appear in other reality TV shows, Muhlbach would jump at the chance to go back on Wipeout, especially if it’s with the same teammates.

“We had great chemistry as group. It was great fun,” concluded Muhlbach.