A picture from better times: In 2019 Antonio Tiberi (M) from Italy took first place in the World Championships, juniors, individual time trial.
Image: dpa
He was considered the greatest hope of Italian cycling, then he said he had to try his new air rifle on his neighbor’s cat: Now Antonio Tiberi’s short career seems to be over for the time being.
In the summer of 2022 he shot the cat of the Minister of Tourism in San Marino – now the Italian professional cyclist Antonio Tiberi has been fired from his Trek-Segafredo racing team. The driver’s actions during his suspension did not meet the team’s criteria for a return to competition, the team said in a statement released on Friday. It was mutually agreed on a separation with immediate effect. There are no further details at this time.
At the end of February, the 21-year-old, who is considered one of Italy’s greatest cycling talents, was fined 4,000 euros by a court in his home in San Marino for shooting the cat of Tourism Minister Federico Amati. His racing team immediately banned him for at least 20 days without payment. Tiberi’s salary was to be donated to an animal charity. The team had expressly not ruled out an extension of the ban.
In the summer of 2022, Tiberi bought an air rifle and wanted to try it out. So he first shot a traffic sign from the window of his apartment. He then decided to aim for a cat’s head – and fatally hit it. The cat belonged to Federico Amati, who called the police. The case ended up in court.
There, Tiberi, once a junior world individual time trial champion, said last November he just wanted to test the gun’s range and then wanted to hit a cat. To his surprise, he actually met her. “I didn’t want to kill her, and I even believed my gun wasn’t lethal.”