Miss Universe 2016 Winner: The 23-year old Iris Mittenaere from France has won the much awaited Miss Universe 2016 title in the annual pageant held today in the Philippines. Mittenaere is a dental student from Lille in northern France. Last year’s host, Steve Harvey hosted the three-hour beauty pageant this year also. Miss France looked really stunned after she was announced as the winner among the 86 equally deserving contestants.
Raquel Pelissier, Miss Haiti was crowned as the first runner-up of the pageant. She is a survivor of the devastating 2010 earthquake in which her hometown was completely destroyed. Miss Colombia, Andrea Tovar was announced as the second runner-up.
Pia Wurtzbach, the outgoing winner from the Philippines crowned the Miss Universe 2016 at the packed Mall of Asia Arena by Manila Bay. Mittenaere said that she would educate people for dental and oral hygiene if she would win the pageant.
The finalists were asked to talk about a failure in their life and the things that they learnt from their failure. To this, Iris Mittenaere said, “I’ve failed several times in my life. When you fail, you have to be elevated and you have to try again and keep going … I have failed before but for me, this is the great first opportunity.”
To the same question, Miss Haiti replied, “I survived the earthquake. I felt I was failing myself because I was not living my dreams … But I chose to be a very positive person, and learned a great lesson from it because if I am here today, it is because I am living my dreams.”
It was only last year when American comedian host, Steve Harvey mistakenly announced the Miss Colombia as the winner in the last pageant in Las Vegas. In the last of his announcement, he said, “This is Steve Harvey, I got it right.”
Miss India, Roshmitha Harimurthy also managed to reach the final 13 list of the pageant.
