A cyclist during last week’s stage five of the Giro d'Italia had one of the most impressive examples of failure through early celebration you’ll ever see.
Luka Pibernik from Slovenia thought he had the race won when he made the final sprint though Messina, but realized something went horribly wrong shortly after crossing the finish line with his arms raised. The race wasn’t close, nobody was hot on his heels or sprinting for the finish — it’s because they realized there was one more lap to race, unlike Luka.
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You might think it would be easy to recover from this spot, but keep in mind that the athletes had already been racing for over 3.5 hours, and typically cyclists burn their last energy reserves on the final sprint. Luka burned his on the second-to-last lap.
The result was finding out after crossing the line that he had another 3.7 miles to ride, and at that point he was spent while everyone else was still on their A-game. He slipped from first place and a stage win all the way to 148th.
We’ve seen early celebrations before, but perhaps nobody who fell this far this quickly.