After eight days in the lead of the Vuelta a España, American Sepp Kuss is still metamorphosing from a super-domestique into a Grand Tour champion but is preparing to spread his wings in a mountainous final week.
In an interview with Sporza, the 28-year-old admitted to being reluctant to take on the role as sole leader of the dominant Jumbo-Visma squad – an opportunity that was floated as a future goal after Kuss won the Tour de France stage to Andorra in 2021.
For now, Kuss is happy to be one of three very strong cards for his team to play alongside three-time Vuelta a España winner Primož Roglič and two-time Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard.
“It’s not necessary for me to have the whole team around me or feel the need to repay the efforts of all my teammates,” Kuss said. “I appreciate the work they do but I’m a guy that would rather be in the shadows. Being in this team with Primož with Jonas, I can still do my thing while working a bit in the in the shadows.”
Over the past two years since his Tour stage win, Kuss has largely been in those shadows, helping to usher Roglič and Vingegaard to their Grand Tour successes – including both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France this year.
Now into the second rest day of his fifth straight Grand Tour and still getting better Kuss said his performance has given him more confidence, “But it’s hard to compare being a domestique to a team team leader.”
Both Vingegaard and Roglič have expressed their support for Kuss but he says the team is not going to back down on the three-leader strategy.
“It’s nice to see that also believe in me and are happy for me in the position that I’m in now. But they’re also real competitors and they want to win as well.
“It’s nice to have three of us in the position we are now but we can’t put an over-emphasis on that and lose the big picture which is just winning the race with one of us in the end. So we just have to be honest with ourselves and who’s feeling the best, or who has the ability to finish it off in the end.”
The final week of the Vuelta a España will undoubtedly reveal the best rider, with the summit finish on the Angliru on Wednesday. But that’s not the stage that concerns Kuss the most. After all, he went up the same climb in the 2020 Vuelta side-by-side with Roglič.
“I love the climbs in Cantabria and Asturias – they’re my kind of climbs, the steep climbs that you see in the Vuelta. I’m feeling really good and looking forward to this week.”
The last time Kuss…
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