Amazing Emmy winner rides in for breakfast

DONNA PAGET

COROMANDEL STAR: The Amazing Race presenter Phil Keoghan breakfasts with wife Louise and a friend at Umu Cafe yesterday.

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Phil Keoghan was the first to arrive at his pit stop yesterday but Coromandel holidaymakers appeared oblivious to having an Emmy-winning reality TV star in their midst.

Keoghan, host of The Amazing Race in which competing couples race to complete challenges around the world, cycled the 26km from his holiday home in Matarangi to Coromandel without apparently encountering any road blocks or detours, to breakfast with his wife Louise and friends at Umu Cafe.

Keoghan and his family are based in Santa Monica, but the New Zealand-born star has been spending Christmas on the Coromandel Peninsula since 1989.

"We started coming here when Louise's family established a house here and it's become a tradition. All of the family comes," he said.

Originally from Christchurch, Keoghan said he visited New Zealand in between filming commitments up to 12 times a year.

Sporting a few blisters on his hand, Keoghan took just over an hour to cycle the windy hill to Coromandel.

"We took it easy today because we did quite a hard ride yesterday. We've also been paddle boating, which is great exercise for core strengthening and complements the cycling."

There's also been time to fit in waterskiing and wakeboarding since the family arrived on December 22. They fly out this weekend as Keoghan is about to shoot the 13th season of The Amazing Race.

At the moment he is scouting for locations.

"I got involved with the show in 2000. I'd been to 60 countries before I shot the race, so it just offered me another opportunity to continue that travel.

"It's a really amazing job and fits in perfectly with the philosophy of my book No Opportunity Wasted, which is about giving people a kick up the arse to get off the couch and do the things they've always wanted to do."