When I became Miss World, I couldn't believe I had won it. I used to sleep with my crown because I was scared someone would steal it. In a minute, the world changed for me.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I didn't have to win, and winning wasn't important to me. Being world champion wasn't important to me. What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.
It goes back to my childhood. I never expected not to win. It's about winning. Winning's fun.
I wanted to be a world champion.
I think for me, the most fun competition that I've had was my first Worlds.
I'm a sucker for lost worlds. I was nostalgic even as a child. I was happiest in my hometown library in Adams, Mass., where nothing seemed to change.
When I won Miss World, I wasn't even 18, and I only remember, like, I thought of it as a day in the races or something. It didn't feel like it was Miss World of the Millennium Year, the change of the century. I didn't understand the magnitude of it for at least a couple of years.
Consequently, I won just about everything I set out to win, everything bar the World Cup, of course. But even now, I don't regret that, because I was part of a team which twice reached the semi-finals.
After I went through two years of not winning an event, what kept me going was winning one more major. Once I won that last U.S. Open, I spent the next six months trying to figure out what was next. Slowly my passion for the sport just vanished. I had nothing left to prove.
I was born to be champion of the world.
I won the crown for what I am - I'm certainly not going to let go of that!