Sepp Kuss may be a Grand Tour winner leading one of the world’s best teams as he attempts to defend his title at the Vuelta a España, but that doesn’t mean that he has forgotten who he was before he took hold of the red jersey a year ago. On Friday, he showed the world that he is still the same old Sepp Kuss who can be relied upon as one of the sport’s best teammates.
“In our team, it’s not only about winning but about performing as a team,” Wout van Aert said after Kuss helped him secure his second stage win of the 2024 Vuelta. “A part of that is that everybody dares to sacrifice himself for the others.”
Van Aert, hunting stages in his Vuelta debut, was the pre-race favorite for stage 7, which featured a punchy climb late in the day – perfect for jettisoning the less versatile sprinters from the pack and putting Van Aert in position to outkick the survivors. Everything seemed to be going according to plan for Van Aert and Visma-Lease a Bike until Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) soloed away from the thinned-out pack on the descent off of the climb.
With other sprinters already out of the picture, the teams of those riders had little incentive to chase. The Decathlon-AG2R la Mondiale team of race leader Ben O’Connor did put in some work, but not enough to reel Soler in. Van Aert’s hopes for a second stage win, and the maximum green jersey points that would come with it, were in jeopardy – but he did have a teammate still in the group. That teammate happened to be the overall defending champion of the Vuelta, but fortunately for the Belgian star, Kuss was not above slotting back into the domestique role he performed so admirably for the likes of Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič in recent years.
Kuss did much of the work driving the pace on the descent, and even as the road flattened out inside the last 10 km, he put his head down and started hammering away at the front. Soler made him work for it, but Kuss pulled the peloton back up to the attacker in the end with just under 4 km to go, making a big effort that the rest of his GC rivals could simply follow.
A few minutes later, Van Aert made it count by taking the sprint win.
“When I saw that the group was still very small and Wout was still there, I knew he was having a good day,” Kuss said afterwards. “I took the lead and tried to keep everyone together. That wasn’t easy. It was a struggle to catch Soler, but it was more than worth it.”
Van Aert, for his part, was duly gracious in victory. He spent several moments celebrating with Kuss at the finish line in Córdoba, and then he was quick to mention the help the American had given in his post-race interview.
“I was determined to finish it off,” he said. “I have to thank Sepp more than anyone for his incredible work at the front. I don’t think people realize what it is like if you are 60 kilos to do those kinds of pulls on the flat.”
While it’s certainly not unheard of for a GC leader to put in the work to help a stage-hunting teammate, as perhaps most famously done by Bradley Wiggins leading out Mark Cavendish on the Champs-Élysées, it is not an especially common occurrence. It’s the sort of thing that is sure to earn the rider making the effort the appreciation of the rest of his squad – and therefore, it is not the worst way to lead from the front. After all, Van Aert is supposed to have a free role in this Vuelta. Given the teamwork he got from Kuss on Friday, perhaps we will see the winner of a Mont Ventoux stage at the Tour repaying the favor at some point later on in the race.
Van Aert certainly was appreciative and alert to the significance.
“The reigning Vuelta champion sacrificing himself for me today is a perfect example of our philosophy,” Van Aert said. “The team was fantastic today.”
Whether Kuss continues to play the occasional domestique role and whether Van Aert is inclined to do the same down the road remain to be seen. At the very least, Visma has given us a show of team unity after they put on one of the more dramatic – and entertaining – displays of disunity in recent memory one year ago at this very race.
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