In the last stage of the Vuelta (won in Madrid by Groves, king of the sprints), Jumbo-Visma debuted a jersey and shorts designed specifically for the occasion. Completely black, a pink, a yellow and a red stripe stood out on the chest and thighs. With those three colors they commemorated a stratospheric year in which they achieved a unique and historic feat: winning the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in 2023. In Italy they won, as they had predicted, with Roglic. In France, Vingegaard triumphed for the second year in a row. In the Spanish round, even with the two leaders at the start and with ambitions, both had to bend and respect the unbeatable form of Sepp Kuss and a race situation that favored his partner, a magnificent climber who donned the red jersey and it took him 14 days to reach the final podium.
“I'm living a dream,” acknowledged the American, who in L'Angliru, where he was third, turned 29. “It's going to take me a while to believe what I've done,” he says. It does not usually happen that the leaders of the line are able to step aside and surely if the person involved had been someone else the outcome would have been different. But it happens that both Vingegaard and Roglic are competing for Sepp Kuss to accompany him in his challenges. His secret is that, with this Vuelta, he has run 12 grand tours and in seven a Jumbo cyclist has won.
“The hype is real,” read a sticker on the red bicycle that Kuss rode yesterday. He was referring to a current of opinion that was unleashed a couple of years ago on the networks for the American from Durango (Colorado) to be given permission to fight for the general classification of a race without ties. After so much sacrifice and help for the benefit of his leaders, in this Vuelta he has savored it. And he has been able to enjoy the affection and admiration of people, happy that he defied logic. “Each stage I felt more Spanish,” he says, since he is married to a former Massi cyclist, Noemí Ferré.
“What has happened is positive for cycling,” says Enric Mas. “When I was a child and watched on TV, I saw the work of the gregarious and when I joined the platoon I valued that role even more. That Thomas (2018 Tour) and Kuss have been able to win a grand tour is positive,” assesses the Movistar Spaniard, sixth overall. “I wouldn't call him gregarious because he has been the strongest,” says Juan Ayuso. “In the time trial he already made his intentions clear and in the Tourmalet I think he was more than enough,” analyzes the Alicante native from the UAE, fourth and best youngster in the Vuelta.
Only one other cyclist has finished the three major races in the same year and was able to win one. It was the Italian Gastone Nencini who in 1957 placed ninth in the Vuelta, won the Giro and finished sixth in the Tour. 66 years later, Kuss, a long-distance runner from another time – his father was a cross-country ski coach – has equaled him: fourteenth in Rome, twelfth in Paris and first in Madrid.
In 2017, Jumbo noticed an American who ran on the Rally team and who stood up to the Europeans in the Tour of Utah and California. He signed him for 2018 and he moved to Andorra, where he lives part of the professional peloton. But Kuss avoids the usual and typical training and, against the grain, prefers to discover his own routes. That has led him to cycle all over Berguedà and Solsonès, where he is loved like a hero and has been adopted as a son because he does not hesitate to stop in the towns to have a coffee, as if nothing had happened. If you ever see a Jumbo yellow jersey for Malanyeu or Pradell's Coll, it will surely be him.
The power of the Jumbo could make one think at the start of Barcelona that a cyclist from the Dutch team would climb to the top of Madrid, what almost no one imagined was that there would be three of them and that the highest box would be Kuss, a cyclist with a code of the of before.
