And the winner is… oops, not you, miss

LAS VEGAS – The host of the Miss Universe pageant mistakenly announced the wrong winner, who then had to give up the crown and hand it over to the 26-year-old contestant from the Philippines.

It was the first edition of the annual beauty show since it was thrust into controversy when then co-owner and US presidential candidate Donald Trump made disparaging remarks about immigrants.

Host Steve Harvey incorrectly announced that Miss Colombia had won the 64th edition of the contest, broadcast live on Fox television network.

Host Steve Harvey holds up the card showing the winners after he incorrectly announced Miss Colombia as the new Miss Universe. AP

The eventual winner, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, a Filipino-German actress and model born in Stuttgart and raised in Cagayan de Oro in the Southern Philippines, was initially runner-up.

But then Harvey announced to the audience that he had made a gaffe.

Ariadna Gutierrez Arévalo, 21, of Sincelejo, Colombia, had already been crowned by Miss Universe of 2014, Paulina Vega of Barranquilla, Colombia, who was forced to remove the crown and give it to Miss Philippines. Olivia Jordan, 27, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, finished third.

“I’d like to apologize wholeheartedly to Miss Colombia and Miss Philippines for my huge mistake,” Harvey said on Twitter. “I feel terrible.”

Wurtzbach appeared to take the blunder in stride.

“It’s a very non-traditional crowning moment,” she said backstage afterward in a video clip of a conversation with Miss USA posted by the Miss Universe pageant on its Twitter feed. “It is very 2015.”

Harvey also apologized on Twitter, but at first misspelled the home countries of both contestants before also fixing that.

Harvey, who was hosting the contest for the first time, said he re-read the card and noticed it said “first runner-up” next to the Colombia contestant’s name before he asked producers if he had made a mistake.

An executive with pageant owner WME-IMG, Mark Shapiro, said Harvey caught the mistake and corrected it on his own, saying he wanted to make a wrong into a right.

“It was humiliating for the women. It was humiliating for him,” he told reporters after the pageant.

Notable moments

Minutes before the pageant ended, a vehicle drove up onto a sidewalk near the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it was held and plowed into pedestrians, killing one person and injuring at least 36, officials said.

Las Vegas authorities said they were trying to determine whether the driver, a woman who was detained, drove onto the sidewalk intentionally or due to impairment.

Among the notable moments of the pageant, Flora Coquerel of France, who was at the Paris stadium the night of the November attacks by militants, reached the final five and Ariana Miyamoto of Japan, whose father is African-American, reached the last 10.

Miyamoto’s height of 1.73 m (5.7 ft) and bronze skin are unusual in Japan and her selection to represent Japan created an online firestorm in her native country.

For the first time, viewers had a chance to vote on the winner, rating contestants in the swimwear, evening gown and interview competitions.