Wrong contestant crowned? Officials with Miss Universe Canada made a typo this week, naming Denise Garrido of Ontario the winner of the pageant, but they later informed her that someone else actually won.
Organizers with the pageant said that “human error” led to Garrido’s selection, saying that Riza Santos of Alberta was the real winner. Garrido actually got fourth-place, reported the Toronto Star.
“My heart sank,” Garrido told the newspaper when she learned it was a mistake. “I was so sad.”
“It’s been the ultimate dream of mine,” said Garrido, who won other pageants. “All of the other pageants were building toward this one.”
Pageant director Denis Davila explained the error;
“During the validation of the computerized scoring results (which occurs the following day), a typo was discovered in the top five entries, which significantly impacted the final results of the competition,” he said, according to the Ottawa Sun.
Davila noted it was the first time that such an error had taken place in the pageant’s 11-year existence.
The error was noticed after a third party audited the results.
“Every single person who does the calculation needs to be third party,” former production director Fabricio Loza-Alvarado told the paper. “If not, it puts you in a very compromising situation.”
