A Canadian beauty queen said she can sympathize with the wrongly crowned runner-up in the 2015 Miss Universe pageant, saying she once had her title taken away.
During the international pageant on Sunday, host Steve Harvey named the runner-up as the new Miss Universe, then realized his mistake and corrected it on live television, taking the crown from Miss Colombia to give to Miss Philippines.
Back in 2013, Denise Garrido was crowned as Miss Universe Canada, but was stripped of her title the next day when it was discovered that a computer error botched the results.
Recounting the gaffe, Garrido told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday that she was called to a meeting with an official the day after winning, and assumed it was to discuss her next steps.
"It was then that he told me that they validated the results and the top 5 were jumbled, so I was no longer the winner," she said.
Garrido said she was shocked, but told herself that "everything happens for a reason, I just don't know why."
Instead, Garrido was told that she was actually third runner-up, or fourth place. The actual winner was Riza Santos, who found out she won when the pageant director called her two days after the competition.
Though Santos didn't get to celebrate her title on stage, she said she didn't feel like the error cheapened the victory.
" I would say that the situation was completely different than I would have ever imagined," Santos told Canada AM.
"It was very unique."
