Samba group Beija Flor was declared champion of Brazil's carnival for the fifth time in six years Wednesday, wowing judges with extravagant floats featuring winged dancers and rich, green jungle displays.
Beija Flor's parade honored legends of the Amazon rain forest and received a near perfect score of 399.3 out of a possible 400. The Salgueiro group came in second with a score of 398 for their parade celebrating Rio de Janeiro.
``If God wills next year, we'll try to do even better,'' said Beija Flor's director, who uses the single name Laila.
The Viradouro group, prohibited by a judge from parading with a dancer dressed as Hitler and float covered in naked Holocaust victims, came in seventh place.
Viradouro, who said its float was aimed at reminding people of past horrors to prevent them from happening again - had quickly changed the display into a protest for free expression featuring dozens of gagged men and women in white robes.
A carnival queen who danced virtually nude apparently helped cause her Sao Clemente samba group to be relegated to a lower, second division of the city's highly competitive parading leagues.
Judges took away points from the group because it broke a rule against skimpy attire. Judges did not mention Sao Clemente carnival queen Viviane Castro by name, but she was widely believed to be the offender because she danced samba in her group's parade for 80 minutes wearing only a 1.6-inch ``sex cover,'' believed to be the smallest in Rio parading history.
Rio's samba parade, which took place on Sunday and Monday nights, looks like a party but it is actually a hotly fought competition.
A panel of 40 judges grade each of the groups in 10 categories ranging, from the floats and costumes to how well the thousands-strong groups move their dancers through the half-mile parade ground in the Sambadrome stadium.
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