Hampshire's Miss Universe contender Grace Levy speaks about moment competition ended in embarrassment

The Miss Universe 2015 competition ended in embarrassment as millions of viewers across the world, as well as thousands inside the arena, watched as the host announced the wrong winner.

The crown was taken from a tearful Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez who was in fact the first runner up and given to a dumbfounded Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach.

Hampshire’s own Miss Universe contender has spoken about what it was like to be in the arena when disaster struck.

Titchfield-born Grace Levy has spent more than six years performing on stage in pageants and winning countless beauty competitions, making it to the Miss Universe competition last year.

But she admitted she has never seen anything like the moment when host Steve Harvey admitted he had announced the wrong winner.

Grace was at the competition as part of a team helping support Miss Great Britain 2015 Nena France and was in the audience at The Axis Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas when the error was made.

She said: “It’s an outrage that this happened. When Colombia was announced as the winner everyone was screaming and going crazy because it was the second year in a row that Colombia had won and last year’s winner came on to crown Ariadna.

“She was crying tears of joy and everyone in the crowd was excited, she was waving her flag and smiling. It must have been about two minutes later that Steve came back on stage looking quite reluctant and said ‘I’m really sorry we have an apology to make’ the whole audience was silent with shock as he said that Miss Philippines was actually the winner.

“Then people from the Philippines were screaming and Colombians in the crowd were booing but it was awful because Miss Colombia didn’t speak very good English so she didn’t understand what had just happened. It was so awkward because no one did anything for a while, it was very tense.

Grace Levy competiting in Miss Universe

“I felt so sorry for them both, it has never happened in a major pageant before so you would never dream of it. It was really sad to watch and speaking to Nena afterwards she said all the girls were really sad and it had tainted the whole amazing event.”

Grace said that many Colombian audience members then refused to leave and were protesting outside Planet Hollywood, where people were trapped because the Las Vegas strip had been closed off due to a car accident which killed one person and injured several others.

Grace added: “It was all crazy and the girls have been put in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, as well as the show but the event was still amazing.

“When you’re in a pageant you become so close with everyone it’s like a little community so everyone was hit very hard by what happened. It was a human error but it was such a shame.”