pip to the post

Definitions

1. To overcome a strong competitor in a sporting event, especially by gaining a small advantage at the last decisive moment.
   idiomatic
2. To overcome a prominent competitor, gaining their position, especially by making a smart, sudden move.
   idiomatic

Examples

“"Pipped to the post⟳: What happens to famous athletes who just miss⟳ a place⟳ on the podium?" (end⟳ of the title) A place⟳ on the podium can be missed by tiny fractions – and finish⟳ a career. Simon Usborne talks to some famous Olympian losers about the moment their dream⟳ ended.”

“What may bar EastEnders from acceptance in the U.S. is not immorality but unintelligibility. PBS may even distribute a glossary of Cockney phrases so that Americans will know⟳ what a character means when he or she is "over the moon," "skint," "pipped to the post⟳," or "in the club" (happy, broke, defeated, or pregnant).”

“Both were pipped to the post⟳ in 1888 by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, a student of Hermann von Helmholtz (himself one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century German physics) who announced to the world that he had found a way of propagating and detecting these long-sought-for electromagnetic waves.”

CEFR level