Love Olympics: 'Bachelor Winter Games' Premiere Blindsides Contestants With Popular Vote

The franchise's latest spinoff rounded up 26 singles from "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette," who have appeared on different seasons and hail from countries all over the world. The U.S., for instance, offered up 12 contestants, while Australia and New Zealand had four. There are two studs from Canada, two beauties from Sweden and a delightfully cartoonish woman from Japan.

In other words, that means a three-time "Bachelor" loser like Clare Crawley has a better shot at love this time. See? There is somebody for everybody. Or in Clare's case two possible somebodies, but more on that later.

What makes "The Bachelor Winter Games" timely is that contestants actually have to compete in and win various sports-based challenges around Vermont. The winner then gets a date card to pursue romantic relationships.

This week, Canadian Kevin Wendt and Swede Rebecca Carlson won the biathlon, which had skiing and paint gun components. So Kevin asked out Miami native Bibiana (season 22 of "The Bachelor") and Rebecca pursued Tennessean Luke Pell. While all of them kissed under a sky full of fireworks, some of the singles that lost found even sexier ways to kill time.

Let's see, there is Josiah Graham who made his TV debut on "The Bachelorette" as one of Rachel Lindsay's suitors. He hooked up with New Zealander Ally Thompson. Josiah doesn't have game but he paid Ally a compliment about her curvaceous body and they were making out in no time.

Meanwhile, Lesley Murphy from "The Bachelor" season 17 wasted no time getting to know Dean Unglert and Lily McManus-Semchyshyn from New Zealand met her kissing match in Courtney Dober of Australia. Lastly, Clare swapped a lot of spit with Canadian Benoit Beausejour-Savard and even cooked with him in the kitchen. But Clare likes being desired. So when she learned that Christian Rauch, who is representing both Germany and Switzerland, is attracted to her too she let him know she likes him as well. Uh oh! Love triangle alert.

Speaking of love triangles, did we mention that Ashley I. also likes Kevin from Canada? The firefighter flirted with her too but asked out Bibiana instead. This made Ashley cry yet again and ask, "Why does this always happen?" Sigh, that poor emotional virgin. Perhaps she'll connect with Kevin next time or find someone else.

After all, Ashley has a lot to celebrate. Unlike the five eliminated contestants such as Zoe Tang of China and Eric Bigger of Baltimore, Ashley is still standing. And can we talk about that for a second? Although Chris Harrison told each person to vote off the individuals who didn't seem to be there for the right reasons, that description is ridiculously subjective.

For instance, Laura Blair of England wanted to vote off Josiah because she thought he had carnal motives based upon one conversation. But then boom, Josiah got to stay and Laura got the boot.

Meanwhile, Zoe, Eric and Southern Californians Lauren Griffin and Jamey Kocan didn't say or do the right things to the right people. Was Eric supposed to tongue kiss a woman immediately upon meeting her like Josiah? Or was Zoe supposed to be overly animated a la Japan's Yuki Kimura?

Not to get all deep – this is "The Bachelor" after all – but in many ways Zoe, Eric, Lauren and Laura are victims of cultural profiling. They didn't behave ostentatiously and amorously enough so they had to go. We would say the same about Jamey but he's practically invisible. What season did he come from again?

"The Bachelor Winter Games" airs Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.