Miss World Netherlands has pulled out of the beauty contest final because contestants are all required to have the Covid vaccine.
Model and dancer Dilay Willemstein, 21, said she is ‘not yet ready’ to get the jab and might never be.
She made the announcement to her 20,000 followers on Instagram late on Tuesday, but has since said she has no regrets.
Now she will be replaced at the final in Puerto Rico in December by Lizzie Dobbe, who came second place in the Netherlands’ contest in July.
As she won her national contest, Miss Willemstein told reporters that winning the pageant was a lifelong dream of hers.
But it was only after winning the Netherlands contest that she was told she would have to be vaccinated to take part in the final.
Announcing on Instagram that she would no longer be competing, she said: ‘This is partly due to the vaccination obligation… and personally I am not ready for this yet.’
She told Dutch site AD: ‘I thought about it carefully and considered taking the jab.
‘But at a certain point I thought: I’m not ready for this at all. I don’t feel good about it. I don’t know if I’ll take that shot later.’
Insisting she has no regrets about her decision, she added: ‘This door will close, but new doors will open for me.’
Puerto Rico does not currently require travellers to be fully vaccinated in order to enter.
The US territory will accept a negative PCR test taken up to three days before departure.
However, new rules introduced last month mean that events operating at full capacity require visitors to be fully jabbed.
If this couldn’t be done, then organisers would be forced to cut down to half capacity.
It is not clear whether the Miss World pageant was referring Puerto Rico’s rules or applying its own when telling contestants they would need a vaccine, but either way, Miss Willemstein has firmly ruled herself out.
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