Laguna Niguel Father-Daughter Duo to Compete on 'Amazing Race'

A father-daughter duo from Laguna Niguel will compete for $1 million on the next season of "Amazing Race."

The local contestants are Dr. Hoskote Venkatesh, a 60-year-old ER physician, and his 27-year-old daughter Naina, a fitness instructor.

This season teams will travel through four continents, nine nations and cover more than 35,000 miles. The challenges contestants will face include paragliding in Chile and driving Formula One race cars in Abu Dhabi.

Here are selections from the Laguna Niguel team's CBS biography.

Hoskote Venkatesh

• Favorite hobbies: Traveling, acting (Shakespearean Theater) and hiking (Naina is training with me to trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro). What is the accomplishment you are most proud of? I’m most proud of my children, who have grown up to be well-educated, cultured, confident young people. Most importantly, they are good, honest citizens who I would love to have as my friends if they were not my children.
• What famous person reminds you of yourself? Hugh Grant – suave, sophisticated and debonair.
• What famous person reminds you of your teammate? Mila Kunis – cute, vivacious, talented and fun-loving.
• Pet peeve about your teammate: She buys too many clothes, which I think she doesn’t wear. (Although, she says she does!)
• What do you hope to accomplish by running The Race (other than winning one million bucks)? Both of us are headstrong and highly opinionated. The Race will help us, if not force us, to learn how to compromise and work with one another as we strive towards a mutual goal of winning the Race.
  

• What is the accomplishment you are most proud of? Graduating from USC with honors.
• What famous person reminds you of yourself? Anne Hathaway – beautiful personality. She loves to laugh, talented and fit.
• What scares you most about traveling? What scares me the most is falling sick or being kidnapped.
• What excites you most about traveling? Being able to immerse myself completely in a new environment, absorbing the sights, sounds and history around me. And through this process, hopefully discovering more of who I am and what I stand for.
  
• Pet peeve about your teammate: I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but I think my dad chooses to have selective hearing. Most times when I am talking to him I’ll have to repeat questions several times before he sometimes will acknowledge that he is listening to me. And then while I am still talking to him, he’ll walk away stating that his mind is elsewhere. It can be frustrating!
  
• What do you hope to accomplish by running The Race (other than winning one million bucks)? I come from a big family, so I have never been able to travel alone with my dad. I see this as an opportunity for adventure and exploration; where I get my dad all to myself and we are able to discover how we could improve upon our relationship as father/daughter but at the same time stay true to who we are as individuals.