Last weekend’s Miss Europe beauty contest was another example of Ukraine’s ability to put on a world-class show but back in 1997 when the country was the first former Soviet Republic to attempt such a major spectacular things did not go quite according to plan, with ten of the contestants of Miss Europe 1997 contest fleeing Kyiv before the grand final amid tales of threatening bandit-style behaviour, inedible food, and late night abductions.

Kyiv in 1997 was a far darker city than the bright and shiny post-orange metropolis it is today, and the whole of Ukraine remained a very much unknown region that few could find on the map and fewer still wanted to visit. Miss Europe 1997, held in Kyiv in the September of that year, looked set to go some way to changing all these perception problems. Ever since the fall of the Soviet UNI0N nothing this big had been hosted in the former USSR, and it was hoped that the extravaganza would do much to counter the images of drabness, poverty and lawlessness that had dominated Western media coverage of the former Soviet empire throughout the 1990s. All such hopes were left in tatters thanks to an amazing incident prior to the grand finals that could have been taken straight out of a Hollywood movie, which saw a number of girls apparently forced out of their hotel rooms late at night and frog marched to a nightclub where they were made to feel that they had no choice but humour their menacing hosts and dance with numerous suspicious strangers. Reports even claimed that Miss England, who was still trying to come to terms with the death of Princess Diana just two days prior to the incident, was hauled naked from her shower after a member of the jury and his cronies had forced hotel employees to hand over the keys to the girls’ rooms. The next day beauties representing England, Wales, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark and Iceland all made a figurative break for the border, seeking security with Western embassies after pulling out of the grand final itself.

 The contest duly went ahead and featured the remaining 33 girls, with Miss Greece running out the overall winner, but even though the pagaent gained broad European TV coverage, reports of the late night incident dominated the media frenzy. ‘Beauties flee the beasts of Kiev in Miss Europe row’ ran the headline in Britain’s influential Daily Telegraph, while the Dail Star opted for ‘Ugly row at beauty contest’. The Irish Examiner was most outraged of all, leading with the shocking statement, ‘Miss Ireland treated like a prostitute’. In other words, it was a lazy journalist’s dream story and brought its fair share of knowing guffaws throughout Western Europe. Event organisers tried to play down the incident, but there was no denying that it was a PR disaster on a grand scale, leaving the stereotype of the so-called ‘Wild East’ more deeply ingrained than ever. One of the French hostesses assigned to chaperone contestants was quoted as saying, “we made a small mistake in that we allowed some people to try and contact some of the girls late in the evening to invite them to participate in non-obligatory events. The girls were tired and probably did not understand that the invitation was optional, so they may have become upset and misinterpreted the knocks at their doors.” Contestants themselves also chipped in, no doubt hoping to win the favour of event organisers, with Miss Holland Leonie Boom explaining, “everything is fine and there are no problems.” She went on to suggest that the girls had left because they were feeling ‘over stressed’ and because they were having difficulty dealing with Ukrainian cuisine. The complaints about poor cuisine may have been real enough, but paled in comparison to the allegations of late night abductions to gangster-ridden discos.

 Since those dark days Ukraine has become increasingly self-confident at hosting big international events, with the huge EBRD conference the following year serving as a turning point and the excellent Eurovision 2005 finally exorcising the demons of Miss Europe 1997. The country is now thought to be a good outside bet to land the 2012 European Football Championships jointly with Poland.