The newly crowned Rose of Tralee, who was backed strongly with  Irish bookmakers as a favorite to win, revealed some of her family scooped thousands of euro as a result.

The Queensland Rose, Tara Talbot was crowned the 53rd Rose of Tralee at the annual festival on Tuesday night.

Backers  made her  the hot favorite to win the Irish beauty competition,and she admits some of her family members were among those who cashed in as a result.

Born in Dublin to an Irish father and Filipino mother, they family moved to Australia when she was just five-years-old.

Speaking to the Irish Times, Talbot described her family as “very close”. She spoke fondly about her grandfather Jack Talbot, a 92-year-old Dublin man, who she says is an “absolute legend”.

He is: “a wonderful man . . . he recorded a CD of himself singing for his 90th birthday. He would live his life through a song if he could.”
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With a passion for helping others, the 27-year-old works with the Irish charity St. Vincent de Paul tutoring a Burmese family, who recently immigrated to Australia.
 
“The family I work with spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, so you can imagine how vastly different our world is,” she told the Irish Times.

This years winner, says growing up she was always aware of the competition: “It’s been on my radar since I was a child – it just seemed an opportune time for me to enter this year. I am actually the oldest now that you can be when you enter the contest and I thought if I didn’t do it, I would have regretted it.”

“The Rose of Tralee is remarkable. It’s far from a Lovely Girls contest. It’s not about being a celebrity: it’s about representing yourself, your family and Kerry and Ireland around the world and connecting the Irish community around the world. There are glamorous elements but that’s not why I entered.”

As her prize the new Rose of Tralee receives her tiara, a $40,000 round-the-world trip, a range of household wear and jewelry from Newbridge Silverware and the use of a brand new Renault Megane.