Cycling’s Most Unlikely Champion
Sepp Kuss’ job is to help other people win races. He finally won his own.
It was never supposed to happen. It wasn’t even supposed to be able to happen. Last week, Colorado-native Sepp Kuss won the Vuelta a España—Spain’s version of the Tour de France and one of cycling’s three “Grand Tour” races—and to understand just how incredible a feat that is, you need to understand just a little bit about how cycling works.
At its core, cycling is an individual sport, but the sport is organized into teams. Like F1 racing, the teams provide support for their racers, pooling resources and strategy to help its top racers win stages. Each team has two star riders, and supporting them are cyclists called “domestiques,’ which translates from French to “servants.”
Sepp Kuss is a domestique on the most dominant team in the world: Jumbo-Visma. His role is to do anything it takes to make sure Jumbo-Visma’s top riders, Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard, win. Kuss will bike in front of them, expending valuable energy, so that they can coast in the slipstream behind to prepare for a final sprint to the finish line—and the glory. If Roglič or Vingegaard crash or have a mechanical issue, Kuss will forfeit his bike and wait behind for a repair while the others continue forward. Kuss will set the pace for the entire peloton, strategically pushing opposing teams too hard so that their teammates can make a surprise sprint to the lead. They’re the ultimate team players. In baseball terms, they’re the last guy on the bench who will play any position—and pitch if that’s needed too.
At the Vuelta, Kuss was supposed to fill that role again, especially during the sixth stage, which was a climb. Kuss is an expert climber, and Jumbo-Visma wanted the domestique to push leader Remco Evenepoel to the brink of exhaustion, losing him overall points. But a funny thing happened during that stage. Kuss didn’t just push Evenepoel; he ran away with the race completely, winning by 26 seconds and almost three minutes ahead of the average finisher. It was his first stage victory in over five years. It was as if Novak Djokovic’s hitting partner had started to advance through the U.S. Open.
As the race continued, Kuss stayed at the head of the pack. By stage 13, Evenepoel slipped far behind, and the top-three podium spots belonged to the three members of Team Jumbo-Visma—with Kuss miraculously on top. But during Stage 17, Vingegard and Roglič made a move to cut into Kuss’ lead, trying to deny the American his first ever win. That when the cycling community pushed back back. Why wouldn’t the two stars support Kuss the way he had supported them? Said one reporter, “The debate about whether Roglič or Vingegaard should win the Vuelta rather than Kuss comes down to whether one thinks that, in sport, winning is the only thing that matters versus how one views concepts like sportsmanship, reward, and loyalty.” The Wall Street Journal’s Joshua Robinson described the situation, “For his entire career with Team Jumbo-Visma, Kuss has been the ideal of a helpful teammate. Now, he’s in the lead…only to find his own guys all too happy to leave him behind.”
Ultimately, sportsmanship won out. Vingegaard and Roglič pulled back. They started to ride in the way Kuss typically did; doing whatever it took to preserve his lead. When they crossed the finish line, they did so with their arms linked together—and Kuss as the champion.
“This is like a fairy tale,” Kuss said.
The servant had become the master. Who would’ve thought?
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