the dream of the friendly cyclist in love with Catalonia is not extinguished despite the internal struggles at the Vuelta

2023-09-16 13:19:47

Barcelona Peace was sealed in Angliru (Asturias) on the day that Sepp Kuss (always with a smile) saw the general classification of the Vuelta in more danger. 19 seconds after team-mate Primoz Roglic’s victory on the Asturian colossus and with double Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard clinging to the Slovenian, the general classification showed a gap of just 8 seconds between leader Kuss (who discovered Catalonia as a place to live 5 years ago) and second place Jonas Vingegaard.

Two kilometers back an image that will go down in cycling history was produced when the reigning Giro and Tour winners dropped their leader, their team-mate, the gregarious man in the red jersey who helped them to to win – three Vueltas and a Giro to Primoz Roglic and two Tours de France to Jonas Vingegaard–. But the egos of the cannibals of victory can be more powerful than the “friendship” they wanted to sell when the doubts came. The leader, Sepp Kuss, did not receive the respect of his teammates or the team itself, who decided that the three of them would play for the final victory until Angliru, instead of protecting the leader as they would have done in a contrary situation with Roglic or Vingegaard in the red shirt.

Kuss, who has always wanted to run away from the bad news and is well-liked in the cycling world, did not want to be kept waiting and on the radio told Roglic and Vingegaard to shoot. But Kuss did not want to lose the Vuelta and stuck to the wheel of Mikel Landa on the monstrous ramps of Angliru at the most complicated and decisive moment for the cyclist from Durango in the Vuelta and overtook the cyclist from Álava at the most pure MotoGP style when the road was already downhill to reach the finish line. Later, the good man of Kuss apologized for the maneuver to Landa. The image demonstrated by the world’s best team at different times of the season with hanky-panky displays by its riders and sporting directors of how to move the pieces on the road game board have been memorable, but in the final week of the Vuelta have played with fire. After the Angliru they put out the fire. At the team’s internal meeting, they decided that as the overall standings at Angliru needed to be maintained until the end in Madrid with a triple on the podium (Kuss, Vingegaard and Roglic). “I deserved this shirt and every day I felt good. At Angliru, I gave everything I had to keep the leader’s jersey”, affirmed Kuss.

In Thursday’s stage with the final in Cruz de Linares (Asturias) Jumbo-Visma played as a team and, although it seemed that Vingegaard had a change of pace in his legs, the Dane did not. “We are happy with how the general is and for today’s stage we have decided to be more defensive”, commented the red jersey to RTVE. And this does not mean that they have given the Vuelta to Kuss, it reflects that they have worked for the leader, their teammate. Nothing more. white flag

The love story of Sepp Kuss in Catalonia

If there is no hecatomb this Saturday, Kuss will win the Vuelta this Sunday after 14 consecutive days as leader. The 29-year-old cyclist arrived in Catalonia in 2008 and settled in Girona. “I really like Berguedà, Solsonès, Cerdanya, Pallars… – explains Kuss to ARA -. Little-known inland roads in the Cardona area are also a pass”, he emphasizes. He stayed in Catalonia to live and also in Andorra for love. “When he came from the United States to Spain, he had an apartment in Girona and trained in the area,” Noemí Ferré, Sepp Kuss’s partner, told ARA. “After he met me he also met my parents, who are from Tiana, and he started spending a lot of time here and he loved it. When we met he lived in Andorra and had an apartment in Girona and from then on we were between Andorra and my parents’ house.

Now they live together in Encamp (Andorra) also with a little dog, Bimba, who has come to the Vuelta different stages perfectly accredited to access all areas with Noemí. When they greeted Sepp before or after finishing a stage, Bimba had parties, she was happy. Like the cycling fans who have seen with the gregarious figure who wins a Vuelta with the great dominators of the Vuelta, Giro and Tour of recent years that everything is possible and that sometimes the small can eat the big.

It is the first time in the history of cycling that the same team wins the Giro, Tour and Vuelta in the same season and Jumbo-Visma has achieved it with 3 different cyclists.