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Giro d'Italia Rider Celebrates Stage Win A Lap Early, Doesn't Win

Those 15 seconds he was cruising in victory must have felt pretty good, though.
Cortesía Wikimedia Commons

Luka Pibernik thought he won Stage Five of the Giro d'Italia. He put up his hands in celebration and cruised for a good 15 seconds with his arms outstretched in victory. There was just one problem: there was still one more lap to go.

Pibernik was eventually overtaken on the last lap and Fernando Gaviria won the stage.

Pibernik's teammate, Vincenzo Nibali, said in a post-race interview that Pibernik's radio had run out of battery, so he couldn't hear his teammates remind him there's still one more lap to go, which at the very least would have minimized the time he sat there basking in a false victory.

As CyclingNews detailed, this isn't the first time a rider mistakenly thought he won a race. In 2013, Pibernik's teammate Ramunas Navardauskas opted not to wear a radio during the Giro d'Italia stage 17 sprint. Navardauskas celebrated what he thought was a victory until learning that Giovanni Visconti had already finished the race 19 seconds earlier.

[CyclingNews]