A Wacky Turnout at the Wipeout Canada Callback Audition Tour

If you’re not already familiar, Wipeout Canada is a game show where contestants run the world’s largest obstacle course. The terrain includes challenges like the "Sucker Punch" (a wall of boxing gloves that randomly punch contestants as they try to run past) and their trademark challenge "Big Red Balls,” which are 6-foot-high balls made of galvanized rubber that contestants have to climb while trying not to slide off into the water. Along the way, spectacular wipeouts occur and hilarity ensues.

This week, Wipeout Canada conducted interviews in three cities across the country, Toronto Calgary and Vancouver, in order to find contestants who are vying to be “Wipeout Canada Champion” and claim the grand prize of $50,000 in October when the show begins filming in Argentina. Our job at HCC is to publicize the tour, facilitate interviews with media, assist with the audition process and enjoy the wackiness that is Wipeout Canada. This is all part of a longer campaign leading up to when the show airs in Spring 2011.

Shortlisted from nearly 45,000 national entries, the candidates selected for audition had the chance to show their true personality (many of them arriving in costume), demonstrate unusual skills and do their best ‘victory dance’ for the panel of guest judges, the shows producers, and hosts Jessica Phillips and Enis Esmer.

All kinds of different people from across the country applied including a walrus trainer, a professional bull rider, roller derby girls, beauty pageant participants, CFL/NHL players and Olympic medallists.

When we arrived at the Toronto auditions at 7:15am there were already hundreds of people lined-up to register- and registration didn’t even start until 8:00am.

The costumes were incredible. There were unitards, capes, lassos, paper mache creations, and men in very little clothing.

Only 260 people will be chosen in total, but we saw a ton of people we would love to see Wipeout!

Look out for the crazy bunch below when the show airs on TV Tropolis in Spring 2011.