Was GC Kuss just a three-week love affair in the heady late summer of 2023? A mythical and mystical time where everyone’s favourite domestique, sweet, placid Sepp, rose above his disobeying and greedy teammates and scored a Grand Tour win everyone had hoped for, but no one really thought would ever happen. Was that it – just a few weeks of glorious fun?
The 2024 season would suggest that was indeed the case. The American’s defence of his Vuelta a España title crashed and burned before it ever really got going, the Visma-Lease a Bike finishing 14th in Madrid, more than 20 minutes adrift of Primož Roglič, his long-time teammate who was one of only two people on the entire planet who didn’t want Kuss to win the Spanish race in 2023 (the other, in case you forgot, was Jonas Vingegaard).
Go a little further back through the season and the results sheet paints a picture of a typical rider embarking on their first full season as GC rider: some good (a win at the Vuelta a Burgos the highlight), some promise by dancing around the top-10 in other races, but overall lacking consistency. That’d be alright if Kuss was in his early twenties, but he’s not – he turned 30 just this month.
The American could very easily slot back into his role, that of a super mountain domestique in the Tour de France, and relinquish the duties and pressure of being team leader, but Visma aren’t giving up on GC Kuss just yet. “We’ll definitely see him chasing general classifications in the future, but always in the function of the team,” his coach Mathieu Heijboer tells Rouleur. “Sepp functions best as being one of the guys, one of the leaders, but not the sole leader. He enjoys being the last guy for Jonas [Vingegaard], or for example on the day to Cordoba [in the Vuelta] when he controlled the stage for Wout [van Aert], that was something that gave him a lot of joy and pleasure. But he’s not a guy only wanting to support – he also wants to chase his own ambitions.”
In 2023, Jumbo-Visma (now Visma-Lease a Bike) completed the podium with Kuss as the champion, Vingegaard in second and Roglič in third (Image by ASO)
A dual-pronged approach, as was the plan at the Vuelta with Cian Uijtdebroeks, remains the direction of choice. “A two-leader strategy,” Heijboer confirms. “Or maybe a strategy where Wout could be in another leading role chasing stages. We did go into the Vuelta with both Sepp and Cian fighting for GC, but the reality is…