Learn Italian: Il quattordicesimo concorrente avrebbe vinto, ma ha sbagliato. - The fourteenth competitor would have won, but he made a mistake.

To form ordinal numbers from 11 onwards, you drop the final vowel of the base number and add the suffix -esimo. Here, quattordici drops its final i to become quattordic-, and then we add -esimo.

If the competitor were female, would quattordicesimo change?

Yes! Ordinal numbers ending in -esimo act like regular adjectives and must agree with the noun. If it were a female competitor, the phrase would be la quattordicesima concorrente.

What tense is avrebbe vinto?

It is the past conditional (condizionale passato), meaning 'would have won'. It is formed using the conditional of the helper verb avere (avrebbe) plus the irregular past participle vinto. We use it here to talk about an action that was possible in the past but did not actually happen.

The word concorrente ends in -e. How do we know if it is masculine or feminine here?

Nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine. We know this specific competitor is male because the words attached to it are masculine: the article il and the adjective ending of quattordicesimo.