Miss USA 2012 Olivia Culpo competes in the swimsuit competition (Photo by Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic)
A self-described “cello nerd” defeated dozens of contestants from all over the globe to bring the crown back to the US after a drought of more than a decade.
Twenty-year-old Olivia Culpo is the new Miss Universe. She won the title last night at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip, replacing outgoing champion Leila Lopes of Angola.
PHOTOS: MISS UNIVERSE OLIVIA CULPO
“I’m dreaming, it’s a dream,” she said while surrounded by the other contestants.
The Boston University sophomore ended at 15-year losing spell for the US – an American had not won the Miss Universe title since Brook Lee in 1997.
Culpo, who beat out 88 international beauties, wore a tight navy blue mini-dress with a sequined bodice as she walked on stage for the event’s opening number.
Later in the night, she dropped jaws as she strutted in a purple and blue bikini, and donned a wintery red velvet gown with a plunging neckline.
The new Miss Universe believes she’s just like any other girl. In a pre-taped segment of the show, she explained, “One thing I feel people don’t know about me is that I’m really easy-going. Any joke, I’ll get it. I mean, I think a lot of the times they think of beauty queens as almost being plastic, but I can take jokes and I can take anything. I’m just a normal person.”
No one was more surprised than Culpo’s family when told them she was entering the Miss Rhode Island contest last year, her father Peter recalled.
“We didn’t know a thing about pageants,” he said.
The stunner took the contest in a rented $20 dress with a hole in it and then began working out, dieting and studying current events on flashcards to compete for the Miss USA crown.
Culpo was good enough during preliminary Miss Universe contests to be chosen as one of 16 semifinalists who moved on to compete in the main show. Her bid lasted through swimsuit, evening wear and interview competitions that saw cuts after each round.
She won over the judges even after tripping slightly during the evening gown competition. Telecasters pointed it out but also noted her poised recovery.
Moments before she won, Culpo was asked whether she had she had ever done something she regretted.
“I’d like to start off by saying that every experience no matter what it is, good or bad, you’ll learn from it. That’s just life,” she said. “But something I’ve done I’ve regretted is probably picking on my siblings growing up, because you appreciate them so much more as you grow older.”
One of those siblings, 17-year-old Gus, was cheering from the front row with his sister’s glittering Miss Rhode Island sash wrapped around his shoulders
Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third. All the contestants spent the past two weeks in Sin City, where they posed in hardhats at a hotel groundbreaking, took a painting lesson and pranked hotel guests by hiding in their rooms.
After the show, Culpo appeared wearing a white gold crown atop her long brown hair and told a group of reporters she hoped to bring the country some good news in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Connecticut.
“It’s such an honor to be representing the USA in an international beauty contest in spite of all the tragedy that’s happened in this country lately,” she said. “I really hope that this will raise everybody’s spirits a little.”
The daughter of two professional musicians, Culpo grew up in Cranston and spent her summers at band camp. She has played the cello alongside world-renowned classical musician Yo-Yo Ma, and followed in her parents’ footsteps with performances at Carnegie Hall.
Her father called her the “nerdiest” of her siblings, and her brother recalled that she was “really chubby and sort of weird when she was younger.”
They speculated that the same single-mindedness that helped her master the cello in second grade propelled her rapid rise through the beauty pageant ranks.
With her promotion, Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether becomes the new Miss USA.
The Miss Universe pageant was back in Las Vegas this year after being held in Sao Paulo in 2011. It aired live on NBC and was streamed to more than 100 countries.
The panel of 10 judges included singer Cee Lo Green, “Iron Chef” star Masaharu Morimoto and Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants.
Asked on the red carpet whether he found playing in the World Series or judging the beauty pageant to be more difficult, Sandoval said both were hard.
As Miss Universe, Culpo will receive an undisclosed salary, a wardrobe fit for a queen, a limitless supply of beauty products, and a luxury apartment in New York City.
With AP