Pageant winner stripped of title after blunder

Losing is never easy, but for one contestant in Canada’s Miss Universe competition the bad news came 24 hours later — after she’d been crowned the winner.

Red-faced organisers admitted that a typo led to a counting error that resulted in Denise Garrido, 26, being wrongly named the victor at Saturday’s event. She was stripped of her sash and crown the next day but the organisers only admitted their mistake publicly later in the week.

“I was shocked. I’d achieved my dream and suddenly after a day of it sinking in it was suddenly taken away from me,” a heartbroken Garrido said, after losing her chance to represent Canada at the Miss Universe final in December.