On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 10/1/2023
Three for Three
In the month of SEPPtember
What a Vuelta! Holy moly, what a Vuelta! So amazing! So exciting! So unexpected! So complex! So…right.
The third and final Grand Tour of the year, the Vuelta a España, will have finished up a couple of weeks before this column hits the street. Given that time lag, you must already know what happened (assuming you’re a fan of pro bike racing). 
So no spoiler alert needed. My only warning is that this race was so much fun but so complex and tangled that this is going to be a long read. Grab a cup of coffee and a croissant and settle in for a while…
Jumbo-Visma swept the table clean, in more ways than just winning. First of all, they occupied all three steps of the podium: Sepp Kuss first, Jonas Vingegaard second, and Primoz Roglič third. One team hogging the whole podium at a Grand Tour may have happened before, although I can’t offhand remember when, or which team might have done it. But we know this for sure: no single team has ever won all three Grand Tours in the same season with three different winners (Roglič at the Giro d’Italia, Vingegaard at the Tour de France, and now Sepp Kuss at the Vuelta). Never before, through all the history of bike racing. That is simply astonishing.
Just to make sure we understand that Jumbo-Visma is the best team in the world right now, add this: during the middle week of the Vuelta, the 8-stage Tour of Britain was going down. Who won? Why of course, Wout Van Aert of Jumbo-Visma! It’s like the seagulls in Finding Nemo: “Mine!” “Mine!” “Mine!” We get everything and the rest of you can dig around in the dumpster out back for any scraps we left behind.
That makes the Jumbo-Visma riders seem like arrogant bullies, but in fact, as far as we, the sports fans, can tell, they’re all really nice, humble, cheerful guys. Especially Sepp Kuss! More about that later.
How did we get here? We know Vingegaard and Kuss took part in the Tour de France in July. Vingegaard won and Kuss finished 12th in the role of the team’s last, best domestique. He completed all three Grand Tours this year, which is more than either of his team leaders did.
Roglič had not done much since winning the Giro back in May. So he did a tune-up ahead of the Vuelta at the 5-stage Vuelta a Burgos (August 15-19). He won the overall, won the points jersey, was 2nd in the KOM…and won three out of the five stages, including an ITT. No obvious rust from the long layoff.
There was an all-star cast of very good riders entered at the Vuelta, hoping to make life difficult for the Jumbos: defending Vuelta champ Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep); Juan Ayuso, Joao Almeida, and Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates); Mikel Landa, Wout Poels, and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain-Victorious); Enric Mas (Movistar); Aleksandr Vlasov (BORA-hansgrohe). Some talking heads rated it the best all-around start list of any recent Grand Tour.
We last mentioned Evenepoel after his rather anemic third overall at the Tour de Suisse in June. Since then he had won the Belgian National Championship Road Race on June 25, won the one-day classic San Sebastian on July 29, and participated in the World Championships, held in August this year. He was the defending champ in the road race but was never in contention this year, finishing 25th. However, he won the time trial on August 11. (Will the real Remco please stand up? Some days he looks invincible and other days not so much.) Neither Roglič nor Vingegaard took part in the Worlds.
Another reason why the Vuelta was so exciting was its parcourse: it was loaded with challenge. Ten out of 19 stages (minus the two time trials) featured uphill finishes, six of them Cat 1, two Cat 2, and two Especial (out of category). They came at the riders early and often: Stages 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18. Add in Stages 15 and 20, which were hilly, and it looked like a leg-breaking monster. Those 12 hilly stages averaged 11,500’ of gain. Overall, the 19 non-TT stages averaged over 9100’. For comparison, the Tour featured five mountain finishes and averaged 8700’. The Giro featured seven uphill finishes and averaged 8400’.
The pre-race chatter was all about whether Remco Evenepoel—so dominant last year but so off-and-on this year—could stave off the two-pronged attack of Primoz Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard. Roglič had been pointing toward the Vuelta all summer but Vingegaard was only added to the roster after winning the TdF. It was a daunting prospect for Evenepoel and for all the other GC wannabes, but no one imagined ahead of time how much harder and more complicated it would actually turn out to be.
The race started with one of their ridiculous team time trials…9 miles around the city streets of Barcelona. I’m no fan of these short TTTs and this was the worst one in recent memory: a tight, technical course run at night, under street lights, in the rain. What could possibly go wrong? Lots of riders sliding out in the slick corners. A total fiasco. Jumbo-Visma, usually among the best teams in these TTTs, finished in 11th place, :32 off the lead and :26 behind Evenepoel’s Soudal-QS team…a lot of time to lose in just nine miles. I did not see it nor hear the commentators mention it, but I understand Vingegaard had a flat, and that would explain the time loss: a precious few seconds to make a bike or wheel swap.
Stage 2 ended with a field sprint and nothing much changed among the favorites. Stage 3 was the first real mountain finish, with two Cat 1 ascents, including the final one: 8 km at 8%. Evenepoel surged out of a group of all the big players to win by one second. With time bonuses factored in, he took over the lead, :05 ahead of Mas, :31 ahead of Vingegaard, :37 ahead of Roglič, and :49 ahead of Kuss, who, perhaps as a sign of things to come, look really lively on that last climb.
Stages 4 and 5 were sprint finishes and nothing much changed among the GC ranks, except Evenepoel snapped up six bonus seconds in an intermediate sprint on Stage 5, padding his lead a little.
Stage 6 was the next uphill finish and, as Phil Liggett might have said, it really put the cat among the pigeons. Most of the stage was only moderately hilly but it ended with a good, husky climb: 11 km at 8%, with the last five km averaging over 10%. A huge breakaway of 40 riders was allowed up the road. Most teams had at least one and often several riders in the break, so no one was motivated to chase down the escapados. Jumbo-Visma put Sepp Kuss in the break with a couple of teammates in what, in hindsight, turns out to have been perhaps the most pivotal move of the entire tour.
Sepp’s role going into the Vuelta was that of a domestique, there to work for his two superstar teammates, Roglič and Vingegaard. We all know he’s a brilliant climber but still…he’s spent his entire career in that support role, pacing his leaders up the big ascents and then dropping off to save his energy to help again another day. Rarely has he been allowed to spread his wings and go for a win. Prior to this tour, his biggest accomplishments had been winning the 2018 Tour of Utah and one stage of the 2019 Vuelta.
So okay, he’s in the break. So are a few other big names: Romain Bardet, Mikel Landa, Marc Soler, Wout Poels, Santiago Buitrago, Hugh Carthy. Midway up that final climb, the break had fallen apart. (The first 17 finishers were out of the break but spread over 2:33; the other 23 from the break were scattered all over the mountain.) With 3 km to go, Kuss dropped the last of his breakaway cohort and soloed on to victory, looking as fresh and cheerful as could be.
Meanwhile, at almost the same time Kuss was going solo, three minutes back, Roglič was jumping off the front of the elite group of GC favorites. No one immediately chased after him. Evenepoel in particular was dropped and appeared to be tapped out. Vingegaard soon jumped across to Roglič, dragging Enric Mas with him, and at almost that same moment, Jumbo-Visma’s Attila Walter came back to Roglič and Vingegaard—out of the remnants of the break—and put in a good, hard pull for his team leaders until the 1 km-to-go banner. At 500 meters to go, Roglič and Vingegaard dropped Mas and rode in together, the first non-breakaway riders to finish, a handful of seconds ahead of Ayuso, Almeida, and Mas. Evenepoel, after having looked so dead at 3 km, put in a late charge to come in 3:24 behind Kuss and :32 behind Roglič and Vingegaard.
Thanks to the time lost in that opening team time trial, Kuss did not quite make it into the leader’s jersey at the end of the stage. He was :08 behind rookie Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ). Evenepoel dropped to 8th, 2:47 behind Kuss but still a few seconds ahead of Roglič and Vingegaard.
Stage 7 was a flat sprint stage and nothing changed. Stage 8 was the next mountain finish and it was loads of fun (for those of us watching, anyway). There were five categorized climbs with the final one a little beast…Xorret de Cati: only 4 km but averaging over 11%, with a pitch in the middle over 20%. The summit was 3.2 km from the finish. There was a steep descent of about two km and then one final uphill…not too steep but still hard work. Jumbo-Visma and Soudall-QuickStep shared the work of setting tempo as they approached the climb, whittling the lead group down to Kuss, Roglič, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Mas, Ayuso, Almeida, and Soler. Lenny Martinez, the leader, was gapped at about 6 km to go and never got back to the front.
Just as they hit the steepest pitch at 5 km to go, Kuss threw in an attack and gapped the group. Evenepoel, with no teammates, had to do the work of chasing him down. He did so, impressively, chugging up that 21% wall sitting down, and pulling Kuss back before 4 km to go. In the process, he pulled Roglič and Vingegaard along with him. He led over the summit at 3 km to go, and was still in front into that final, uphill kilometer. He sprinted for it and at first it looked like a repeat of his win on Stage 3, but Roglič whipped around him on the outside and took the stage.
Martinez lost 1:10, lost the leader’s jersey, and fades out of our narrative. Kuss took the lead and never relinquished it over the final 13 stages. The top dozen riders were still a mix of those whose teams had a good TTT on Stage 1 and those who benefited from being in the big break on Stage 6, and finally, the cream of the crop who would eventually rise to the top…but at this point it was still an unsettled leader board.
Stage 9 was another uphill finish with what should have been a fairly testing final climb. But a soupy landslide across the road right near the finish caused the commissaires to change things a bit. They managed to get the mess cleaned up enough so that seven riders out of a break could do the whole distance. But behind them, they took everyone else’s times about two miles below the original finish line. The results ended up looking really screwy, and I confess I don’t fully understand how they reconciled the times. The bottom line though is that Kuss stayed in the lead, Soler was at :43, Evenepoel at 2:22, Landa and Roglič at 2:29, Vingegaard and Mas at 2:33, and Ayuso and Almeida not too far behind. Nobody complained about the times and placings, so I guess they got it right.
Stage 10 was the only ITT of the Vuelta, 26 km and almost dead flat, with one small climb early on. Filippo Ganna, an ITT specialist, finished first, with Evenepoel :16 behind and Roglič another :20 behind Evenepoel. Almeida and Vlasov were 4th and 5th, Ayuso and Soler 7th and 8th, and Vingegaard, usually a real tiger in time trials, was 10th at 1:18. Kuss was 13th at 1:29. So Sepp lost a little time but stayed in the lead, with all the other major players still in the top ten, still within about three minutes. Notably, Vingegaard, the newly crowned TdF champ, was down in 7th place at 2:22. Was he a little tired from his Tour de France? What’s up with that?
Stages 11 and 12 were a chance for the GC rivals to rest a bit and let others strut their stuff: a big breakaway of nobody important on Stage 11 and a mass field sprint on Stage 12…no changes at the top of standings. The top dawgs were keeping their powder dry for what was ahead: seven out of the next eight stages in the mountains, including some of the hardest climbing on this or any other tour, in this or any other year. It stacked up as a murderers’ row of punishment.
Stage 13 was epic. Three massive ascents in the Pyrenées: Aubisque, Spandelles, and Tourmalet to finish things off (19 km at 7.4%, with the last two km at around 10%). The bulk of the stage was run off in a fairly orderly way. A few breaks but mostly the peloton stayed together under the control of Jumbo-Visma and UAE. The only remarkable element—and it was really remarkable—was the fade-away of Remco Evenepoel. Right from early in the stage, he lost contact with the leaders. For a while, the gap stabilized at under two minutes but as the long, grueling climbs took their toll, the gap widened and widened and widened. He didn’t really look like he was suffering, riding a steady tempo with his team gathered around him. He was just slow (relative to the leaders).
The leaders…what were they doing? Jumbo kept things under control until about halfway up the Tourmalet. Then their assorted workhorse tempo-setters clocked out for the day and it was down to Vingegaard, Roglič, and Kuss, with a handful of other team leaders hanging on. Just under 8 km to go, Vingegaard jumped off the front. A few of the others chased and hung onto him briefly, but by 7 km he cut the cord and was off on his own, going solo to the stage win. (So that answered the question as to whether he was tired from the TdF!) Behind him, Kuss and Roglič and Mas all tried little attacks but nothing really opened up until Kuss lit it up at 1.2 to go. He took off soooo fast…the cliché scalded cat. It was so much fun to finally see Sepp off the leash, riding like a leader and not just a domestique. He kept the hammer down and crossed the line :30 behind Vingegaard. And as fast as Kuss reeled off that last km, Roglič was almost as fast: he crossed the line just :03 after Kuss.
It was the most complete triumph for the Jumbos…first, second, third…and that rewrote the GC standings completely: Kuss still first, Roglič at 1:37, Vingegaard at 1:44. Ayuso, Mas, Soler, Landa, and Vlasov were 4th through 8th, none of them absolutely out of it yet but all looking up at the trio of hard boys ahead of them. It made sense for Vingegaard to attack on this stage, even if it meant leaving his teammates behind. At 2:22 down, he had some time to make up. I have to assume this was the team plan all along.
As for Evenepoel, he finished 60th, over 27 minutes back. 27 minutes?! The TV guys said it was probably the worst day of his professional career. No doubt. But when Tadej Pogačar suffered what he called the worst day of his professional career in this year’s Tour, he lost 5:45 to Vingegaard. I called that time gap “whopping” in my TdF review. If 5:45 is whopping, how should we describe a loss of 27:05? That left him in 19th place, 27:50 out of first. Obviously, his defense of his championship from last year was over.
Stage 14 was another really tough climbing day, with a Cat 3 and a Cat 1 to finish and two out-of-category summits. If you thought Evenepoel would disappear from view after his Stage 13 meltdown, with all hopes of an overall win gone…well, you don’t know Remco. He got into the break of the day—five riders—and took the max points on every one of those four summits, which also means he won the stage. I can’t get inside his head, but it would appear that, overnight, he hatched the bright idea of reinventing himself and his goal at the Vuelta from winning the overall to becoming the King of the Mountains. After this stage, he had enough points to take the lead in that competition and to don the polkadot jersey.
He kept at it for the rest of the tour, getting into the breaks on Stages 15, 17, 18, and 20. He won Stage 18 and was a close 2nd on Stage 20. Every day he was scooping up more KOM points until his lead was way out of reach: 135 points over the 51 points of 2nd place Jonas Vingegaard. Of course, Vingegaard wasn’t contesting the KOM; he was still battling for the overall or riding in support of teammates Kuss and Roglič. Which just points out how silly and frivolous the KOM competition can sometimes be.
Occasionally the KOM—supposedly honoring the best climber—will actually go to the best climber. But often it goes to a rider who is no threat for the overall and so is allowed—by the real best climbers—to get into the breaks and squirrel away KOM points. Anyone who is a threat for the overall will not be allowed to get away like that. I thought Evenepoel going for the KOM was actually rather demeaning: here’s a young rider who has, in a couple of years, marked himself out as one of the top three or four riders in the world…winner of last year’s Vuelta and last year’s World Championship; winner of other really big races…and now here he is, in his blue polkadot jersey and helmet, capering around like the court jester while the real heads of state are still fighting it out for the overall. Frankly, I was embarrassed for him. But if that’s what he needed to do to salve his pride, okay…good for him. For the record, all his hustle and bustle on the climbs eventually moved him from 19th to 12th and from 27:50 down to 16:44 down. Not all that great but hey, check out that polkadot jersey!
Anyway…behind the five-man break and Remco’s side show, all the top riders finished together in places 6-17. So no change at the top. Stage 15 was more of the same: a breakaway filling the top spots at the finish and all the top riders coming in together. No change.
But now things start to get really hinky…
Let’s pause for a minute and consider the situation. 15 stages complete and five to go (excluding the final, semi-ceremonial stage into Madrid). One of those five stages is flat but the other four are hilly, often to an extreme degree. In other words, lots of places for big things to happen, for the standings to be shuffled around.
Sepp Kuss, the hard-working, sweet-tempered domestique from Colorado, is, rather improbably, in the lead. His two superstar, Grand Tour-winning teammates are 2nd and 3rd: Roglič at 1:37, Vingegaard nipping at his heels at 1:44. Ayuso, at 2:37, Mas at 3:06, and Soler at 3:10, even Landa at 4:12, are all still in the hunt…perhaps not for 1st but at least for a podium step, should any of the Jumbos falter.
There is an unwritten rule in racing—one of many unwritten but well understood rules—that you do not attack a member of your own team when he has the lead. Like most unwritten rules, this one is elastic and subject to all sorts of exceptions and variables and what-ifs, such as Vingegaard attacking his teammates on Stage 13 to claw his way back up to the podium. It is a team sport and you’re supposed to support the best-placed rider on your team. But what if the team brain trust thinks the best-placed rider at some point may not be able to hold his lead? What then? Do other teammates take over the leadership? The annals of racing are replete with examples of situations like this and they all play out in different ways and leave us, the fans, debating the merits or faults of whatever happened, long after the events are over.
Keep all that in mind as we move on to Stage 16. This stage had a moderate, rolling profile right up to the end, where it tipped up into one relatively small ascent: 5 km at 8.5%. A small breakaway hit the hill first, with the assorted leaders arriving together just a bit behind. Jumbo had four riders left: the big three plus Attila Walter. The latter pulled for a bit but then, just under 4 km to go, on a steep pitch, Vingegaard attacked. Which is to say, he not only attacked the riders from other teams, he also attacked Kuss and Roglič from his own team, both ahead of him in the standings.
He won the stage and leapfrogged Roglič into 2nd place, just :29 behind Kuss. Just inside the final km, Roglič jumped off the front of the chasing group, with Ayuso, Mas, Vlasov, and Kuss chasing after him. In the end, they all came in together and were given the same time…except for Kuss, who was :04 back. So, in effect, Kuss was attacked twice by his own teammates. Neither Vingegaard’s nor Roglič’s attack was in response to accelerations from rivals. There was no need to do what they did. It gets worse…
Stage 17 was arguably the hardest stage of the tour. The first half was moderate but then there were two Cat 1 ascents in the second half and finally Altu de l’Angrilu, often referred to as the most feared climb in professional cycling. (Its overall stats: 13 km at 9.4%. But that’s so misleading. The first six km are hard but not brutal and the final km-plus is easy—under 4%—but the six km in the middle…whooo! 800 meters of gain. In non-metrics, that’s over 2600’ in 3.7 miles…over 13%. But even that is misleading. From 3.5 km to go to 1.5 km to go, it’s between 17 and 24%.)
With 4 km to go, the lead group was down to Kuss, Roglič, and Vingegaard for Jumbo-Visma and Wout Poels and Mikel Landa for Bahrain-Victorious. Poels was the workhorse, doing all the pulling. (Why B-V thought it good strategy to pull the Jumbos up the hill, I have no idea.) Just under the 3 km to go banner, Roglič attacked. Poels was dropped immediately and then too Landa. Vingegaard and Kuss chased after Roglič, caught him and stuck with him. But just past the 2 km to go banner, Kuss was gapped. It’s a yard, then two, then three… You can see him get on the radio to the team car, probably saying, “I’m getting dropped!” Vingegaard, on Roglič’s wheel, looks back and sees Kuss falling away…and he turns back to the front and motors off up the steep, steep pitch with Roglič.
By 1.5 km to go, the gap was close to :30 and Kuss was out of the virtual lead, or so it seemed. But then Mikel Landa, finding a second wind, caught Kuss and pulled him all the way to the finish, pulling back some time. Kuss was 3rd and Landa 4th. They came in :19 behind Roglič and Vingegaard. With bonus seconds factored in, Kuss was still in the lead but only by :08 over Vingegaard and 1:08 over Roglič.
Once again—second day in a row—Kuss, the faithful domestique—was dropped by his two superstar teammates. The most charitable spin you can put on this is that the team strategy was to consolidate their hold on all three podium steps. They certainly did that. Ayuso, in 4th overall, was now 4:00 behind. Landa was at 4:16 and Mas at 4:30. But they could have done that without dropping Kuss. When they saw he was losing contact at 2 km to go, they could have eased off just a touch and kept him hooked on. So what if Landa clawed back up to them. He’d started the day 4:12 behind, so if he managed to finish with them, he’d have been about where he ended up anyway. It didn’t appear that anyone else was going to catch them or get past them, so why not keep Kuss safe?
It was an impressive show of force by Roglič and Vingegaard but it was a bad look for the team, throwing such a popular and likeable teammate under the bus. After Stage 16, there were rumblings from the press corps about dropping Kuss. After Angrilu—which happened to be Sepp’s 29th birthday—that boiled over into a media feeding frenzy about team tactics, loyalty, “gifts,” and every little permutation of bike etiquette and sportsmanship. The face the team members and management put out to the public was uniformly bland and cheery and inclusive. Kuss in particular was diplomatic about the situation…unfailingly kind and positive. But you know, behind the scenes, the team realized they had an ugly public relations disaster on their hands.
Kuss has been with Jumbo-Visma for six years and is signed up for 2024. Over that span, he has worked tirelessly for his team leaders. Look no further than Stage 16 of this year’s Giro, when Roglič was dropped by Joao Almeida and Geraint Thomas: Kuss paced Roglič over the final miles to limit his losses. Roglič only won the Giro by :14 over Thomas. Without the time saved that day, Roglič might not have won the Giro. Kuss has been there for them, time after time, steep hill after steep hill, burying himself for the leaders. And through it all, he’s remained the nicest guy in the pro peloton, always smiling, always happy. A true gentleman. Everyone likes him. Now you’re going to snatch this victory away from him? Roglič already has three Vuelta crowns; Vingegaard was just coming off his second straight Tour de France victory. And over his entire career, Kuss has never been given the opportunity to win much of anything. I mean, c’mon….
Add to that the idea that the team had a shot at doing something that has never been done before and may never be done again: win all three Grand Tours with THREE different riders. That’s historic on a grand scale. That’s really too good to pass up, to mess up. You can imagine the discussions amongst the team members and management after this stage. The good news is they finally got it. The next thing we hear from the team and from the riders, before Stage 18: “We’re all in for Sepp!”
If you read the comments at the bottoms of some of the internet reporting on this whole kerfuffle, you will see that 80% of the fans are rooting for Kuss. But a smaller contingent says the strongest rider should win and presumably, because they dropped Kuss, that would have to be either Roglič or Vingegaard. To that I say: utter horseshit! You folks have been steeped too long in the old Bernard Hinault “no gifts” mentality. Anyway, it’s not a gift. It’s a debt repaid, a favor returned. It’s karma. It’s one good turn deserves another. One hand washes the other. It’s the way the world is supposed to work. I was just rereading an account of the first San Francisco Grand Prix in 2001…Lance Armstrong, fresh off a Tour de France victory, worked his ass off in the one-day race to pull George Hincapie up to the lead. George then took over and won. Was Hincapie a better rider than Armstrong? Of course not, but he’d pulled Armstrong up so many hills, so many times…it’s payback. Anyone who thinks that’s not how pro cycling works is not paying attention.
Harrumph! Please excuse my rant. Once Jumbo-Visma was clear on the concept, the final four stages were mostly free of drama. Breakaways on two stages and field sprints on two, with Vingegaard, Roglič, and Kuss rolling in together each day, safe and sound. Vingegaard even soft-pedaled one finish to drop off Kuss and allow the final gap from Kuss in 1st to him in 2nd to grow from :08 to :17. Roglič remained 3rd at 1:08. Judging by all the happy images at the finish of Stages 20 and 21, you would think having Kuss as the winner was the game plan from the very beginning. If it was, they had a strange way of getting there.
I don’t know that much about Vingegaard but I have watched Roglič for many years now and he has always come across as just about the classiest guy in racing, the very best embodiment of good sportsmanship. I have a hard time thinking of him as a ruthless, cut-throat sort of competitor. Not that he doesn’t want to win, but not at the expense of someone like Sepp…at least that’s my benefit-of-the-doubt take on him. I want to think that what happened on Angrilu was what we might call the red fog of war: maxxed out, locked in, head down, on a 24% wall, just boiling along, brain gone into robo-mode…losing track of Kuss. Maybe I’m naive. I want to think that when the heat of battle was over, he was probably a little chagrined at how that played out. I doubt we’ll ever know.
But what we do know is we just saw one of the greatest Grand Tours of all time, with towering athletic feats and with plot twists right out of a novel. In fact, there is a novel with approximately this plot: The Yellow Jersey by Ralph Hume…a mid-pack domestique ends up in the lead at the Tour de France and…well, you’ll just have to read it.
The subplot after all this is what will these three riders be doing next year? If Vingegaard is going to be the team leader at the Tour de France again, you have to wonder if Roglič might want to find another team where he can be the leader at le Tour. But where do you find another team as strong as Jumbo-Visma? He’ll turn 34 this month…not a kid anymore. He can hear the clock ticking. Go for it now or forget about it. Will Kuss return to his role as the humble, helpful domestique or will he want some leading roles himself? We’ll have to wait a few months for that to play out. For now, we must be content with reliving this last, best Grand Tour of 2023. Chapeau! to all the riders and teams and sponsors who made it possible.
PS: One week after the Vuelta we had the Men’s Elite European Continental Championship, similar to the World Championship in that riders ride for their national teams, not their trade teams. 1st place: riding for France, Christophe LaPorte (Jumbo-Visma); 2nd place: riding for Belgium, Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma); 3rd place: riding for the Netherlands, Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma). Another Jumbo-Visma podium. “Mine!” “Mine!” “Mine!”…
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net