SUN CITY (South Africa), Nov 17: Agbani Darego of Nigeria won the 2001 Miss World contest on Friday at the Sun City resort in South Africa, saying the joy of victory was “just indescribable”.

Darego, an 18-year-old computer science student, tall, athletically built, and with shoulder-length hair, is a hiker, a dancer, and has the ambition to become a supermodel.

It is the fourth time a contestant from Africa has won the competition. It started in 1951, which means that the early beauty queens are now about 70 years’ old.

The last African to win was Miss South Africa, Anneline Kriel, in 1974.

Runners-up at the luxury casino retreat in the South African bush, 180 kilometres northeast of Johannesburg, were Miss Aruba, Zerelda Lee, a 19-year-old law student (second), and Miss Scotland, Juilet-Jane Horne, an 18-year-old media student (third).

Darego won a cash prize of 100,000 dollars, plus gifts valued at 150,000 dollars, and will travel the world over the next year.

Television viewers took part in the voting for the first time, directed to local telephone numbers from the Miss World website.

Their votes — with each country given equal weighting — counted toward the first winnowing-out: the viewers and the jury at Sun City were each given 50 percent of the vote for the first 10 finalists out of the 96 contestants.

After that, the jury decided.

Bookies had made Miss USA, Carrie Ann Stroup, the favourite, followed by Miss Chile, Christianne Balmeli, but neither figured in the final 10.

About 3,000 spectators viewed the event live inside the Sun City Superbowl, while an estimated 1.2 billion others watched it on television.—AFP