The Beijing Express final is broadcast this Saturday evening on M6. The epilogue of a season in which a duo burst onto the screen...
The final of Beijing Express, “in the footsteps of the golden tiger”, is broadcast this Saturday evening on M6. Two teams will compete for the ultimate title in the historic streets of Hanoi: the hairdresser and his client, Romain and Laura, as well as the "Corsican colleagues" Patricia and Jessica. But one pair will be sorely missed in this final: Ryad and Louison who was the “pair of unknowns” of Beijing Express this year, and above all the public’s arch-favorite duo.
Ryad and Louison were indeed the darlings of this 2024 season of Pékin Express. They will even have been unanimous at the start of the adventure, despite their apparent differences which will have ended up being transformed into a remarkable complementarity. Associating a body-built Marseille sports coach with a young dreamer, festive and a little awkward, will undoubtedly have been the genius idea of the producers of the adventure game. A chance encounter which made Ryad and Louison the emblematic figures of the eighteenth season.
A confrontation could have tarnished their image in Beijing Express: the one that took place with Patricia and Jessica at the end of February. On February 29, in fact, the two “Corsican colleagues” were eliminated at the gates of Malaysia by the pair of strangers, who then seemed perfectly unbeatable. And it was Ryad and Louison who had themselves decided to confront them, as required by the rules of the game.
“At the last stage, Ryad promised us that he would never choose us for the final duel because he had Corsican friends,” assured the two candidates, stunned by the choice of the pair with whom the affinities had become very strong. . The duel will have the effect of a betrayal and will act as a break in this season. Jessica would later reveal that Louison had even confided to her that “it was her biggest regret of the adventure”.
Patricia and Jessica will finally be miraculously drafted by production two weeks later, on March 21, after the abandonment of the duo Myriam and Patrick. Enough to give rise to another clash with Ryad and Louison, in April and in the semi-final! And this time, it is the Corsican pair who will win and eliminate the shock duo, to the great dismay of the public. Enough to devastate Louison, who collapsed in front of the cameras, but also to give rise to harsh comments from Jessica on Ryad's behavior.
“He scared the driver to prevent us from taking the car and he did it twice,” protested the candidate, already burned by her misadventure in February. “That we're in a game, OK, but that lacks fair play [...]. We must all respect each other and, for me, it's anti-game,” the candidate even said in an interview with Télé-Loisirs. “Never in life could we have pulled off something like this!”, Patricia also reacted.
Ryad has since explained these low blows to the other candidates. “I remember it as if it were yesterday. Louison told me to remain discreet but I was hot-blooded, there was a place in the semi-final at stake,” he explained recently to 20 minutes. “I wanted to play the destabilization card, Marseille style. If I had to do it again, I would do it again, I have no regrets,” the former candidate even laughs.
If the bickering between the two pairs was notable, the four candidates seem to have since maintained good relations. Jessica and Patricia were "able to discuss" with the Marseillais at the end of the adventure and ensured that things were back to normal. In mid-April, the quartet even posted more-than-cordial reunion photos on Instagram. "The big family of Beijing Express goes beyond the boundaries of the game", noted Jessica, when Patricia made a statement to Louison: "you are simply brilliant! We love you, my little one!"
Although we may point the finger again and again at their trickery and their tricks, Ryad and Louison are, in truth, the only real winners of Beijing Express 2024. The duo will have participated in six final duels out of seven, a record. He will have especially marked the spirits with his complicity, his good humor, his fits of laughter and offered the spectacle of a superb budding friendship. The flood of messages of regret and thanks when they were eliminated is the best proof of this. “This love of all French people, for me, is the greatest victory,” concluded Ryad, still in 20 Minutes, when Louison gave a glimmer of hope to the fans: “Who knows, maybe one day Beijing Express will call us back, we don’t know…”
