Billionaire Donald Trump told Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner on Tuesday she would be given a second chance after reported misbehavior.
NEW YORK: Billionaire Donald Trump told Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner on Tuesday she would be given a second chance after reported misbehavior.
The property magnate and host of the television reality show The Apprentice, who co-owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe contests, was widely expected to fire Conner.
Instead, he said Conner would go into a rehabilitation program and would not be stripped of her Miss USA title.
Media reports of blond beauty queen Conner partying at bars and nightclubs in New York -- where the legal drinking age is 21 -- began surfacing last week.
The former Miss Kentucky USA turned 21 on Monday.
Conner agreed to go into rehabilitation after Trump said the small-town girl from Kentucky had got caught up in the whirlwind of New York nightlife.
But Trump said one more step out of line and Conner, who was photographed under-age drinking at nightclubs around the city, would lose her crown.
Conner would not be the first beauty queen to be dethroned. Trump fired Miss Universe four years ago for doing “a terrible job”.
Some fallen beauty pageant winners:
1973 - Marjorie Wallace, first American Miss World, lost her crown for dating too many men.
1984 - Vanessa Williams, first African-American Miss America, resigned after sexually explicit photographs of her appeared in Penthouse.
The issue was said to be the most successful ever for the magazine. Her singing and acting career took off.
1998 - Lejla Sehovic, Miss Croatia, was subjected to a second ballot in which she lost to the pageant's original runner-up. Sehovic, who said she had lost the title because of her Muslim faith, represented Croatia after a compromise was reached. The initial runner-up represented Croatia at the Miss World pageant in 1999.
2001 - Newly crowned Miss Colombia Karol de la Torre stepped down after a whirlwind of controversy over whether she was divorced.
2002 - Oxana Fedorova, Russian Miss Universe, was fired by Trump when she balked at her schedule.
2006 - Danielle Lloyd, Miss Great Britain, lost her crown for reportedly dating soccer star Teddy Sheringham before he judged the contest and also for agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine.
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