The Rose of Tralee is a “beauty pageant that’s not about beauty”, this year’s winner said of how she explains the contest to her friends. New Zealand Rose Keely O'Grady said hardly anybody she knows has any idea what the contest is about. The 21-year-old Bachelor of Speech and Language Therapy student and third New Zealand winner of the title in the contest’s 65-year history, said that is how she sums up the contest.
She was speaking to reporters moments after being picked as this year’s Rose of Tralee at the end of two selection nights at the Kerry Sports Academy at the Munster Technological University (MTU). Keely succeeds the 2023 Rose of Tralee, Róisín Wiley, from New York. “The way I like to explain it to people in New Zealand, if I'm in a bit of a rush, is that it's a beauty pageant that's not about beauty,” Keely said.
“It's about ambitions. It's about aspirations. It's about self worth and talent, and it's about the strength of a woman.
“It's about celebrating a shared culture and connection and heritage that we all have, all the girls that enter the competition. That's how I like to try and explain it.” She said she did not expect to win and that she was shocked when she did.
She described her fellow contestants as “beautiful, amazing, talented women”. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart. It seems like a very cliche thing to say, but they genuinely are.
“That shock comes from the fact that it could have been any one of them, and the fact that the judges saw something in me and great inside me while standing alongside those other 31 incredible women. That really means a lot to me.” On “absolutely not” expecting to win, she said this had nothing to do with not believing in herself or thinking that she wasn’t capable of winning.
Instead, she said, it was about the fact that “every single one of those women out there had something incredible to offer”. She added: “I just thought it was a one in 32 chance, honestly, for any single one of us. “So, you know, it's a bit of a small chance at the end of the day.
” Keely said that winning “means doing my family proud”. She said that because New Zealand is so far away, it is harder for people with Irish roots to stay connected with their Irish culture and heritage. “It’s something you have to actively go out and seek to connect with, whereas people in Ireland, I feel like that's something they may take for granted because you're surrounded by it on a day to day basis,” she said.
“So I think for me, it means an opportunity to hold this title and celebrate my Irishness at a level that I wasn't able to before. “I think it will bring me a lot closer to my family and a lot closer to my Irish culture, my Irish heritage.” She also spoke about the similarities between Ireland and New Zealand.
"That New Zealand and Ireland have very similar cultures is something that I've expressed throughout my time in Ireland during the rose tour and the festival," she said. "People who (came) up to me and (shared) their experiences of being in New Zealand pretty much say, you know, 'Ireland and New Zealand are very similar' in terms of their people, their food, their landscape, so they're very similar places. "I think another thing that was really cool to me to point out was the fact that New Zealand and Ireland have really similar experiences with colonization.
" She also said that both countries are also going through "cultural revitalization" over their respective languages, traditions and art..
