A year is a long time in cycling. Twelve months ago, Sepp Kuss rode into Madrid in the red jersey as his Jumbo-Visma team completed a sweep of both the Vuelta a España podium and the season’s Grand Tours. On Sunday evening, the Vuelta had a more low-key finale for Kuss, who ended the race in 14th place overall, more than 20 minutes behind his former teammate Primož Roglič.
Now plying his trade with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Roglič’s win was the final instalment in Slovenia’s dominance of the season’s Grand Tours after Tadej Pogačar’s triumphs at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.
It has been a more sobering season for Kuss’ squad, rebranded as Visma-Lease a Bike, with ill fortune a constant throughout the year. Jonas Vingegaard performed remarkably to place second at the Tour after a career-threatening crash at Itzulia Basque Country, while Wout van Aert suffered season-defining falls at Dwars door Vlaanderen and again on this Vuelta.
Kuss endured his share of hard luck too, missing the Tour de France after contracting COVID-19 in June. Although he won the Vuelta a Burgos on his return to competition in August, Kuss never quite looked up to the pitch of Roglič et al on the Vuelta. His title defence, already flagging in the opening phase, had essentially ended by the time the race reached Asturias at the end of the second week.
With so much arduous terrain in the final section of the race, Kuss had hoped to hunt a stage victory at the Alto del Moncalvillo or Picón Blanco, but instead he slipped further down the standings. It was that kind of race.
"Now I’m glad it’s over," Kuss acknowledged when he completed his time trial in Madrid on Sunday night. "The last two days I really suffered a lot, and they went by slowly. I’m happy it’s over. But I learned a lot in this race, as I do in every Grand Tour. It’s been a hard one."
It’s never easy to dissect a disappointing Grand Tour, particularly in the middle of a noisy finishing area immediately after completing the last of the race’s 3,265km. There will be time enough for a full debrief in the weeks ahead, but on Sunday evening, Kuss was reluctant to cite his illness-interrupted summer as an explanation.
"It’s hard to say. I mean, I didn’t have my best form but on a lot of stages I was really happy with my performance. It’s just the level is super high," Kuss said. "There’s no excuses, really. You can always say one thing or another, but at the end of the day everybody has hurdles and problems or excuses. I just have to be better next time around."
The Vuelta victory of last year was all the more notable because Kuss had played such a crucial supporting role for Roglič at the Giro and for Vingegaard at the Tour. Rather than feel drained by those efforts, Kuss seemed able to draw on deep reservoirs of endurance as August flipped into September. This time out, the Vuelta was his first Grand Tour the year and he felt lacking in some departments.
"I think in this race I noticed on the harder days that I missed that bit of racing fitness that you only get from races or from doing Grand Tours," Kuss said. "But for sure, doing three Grand Tours isn’t something that’s super sustainable every year. For me, it was hard to miss the Tour in itself, but it was also hard to miss it in terms of preparing for the Vuelta."
For much of the Vuelta, Visma-Lease a Bike had still looked destined to secure a podium spot in Madrid, with Van Aert enjoying a resurgence on Spanish roads after a broken collarbone had ended his Classics campaign prematurely.
The Belgian had an early spell in the red jersey and after collecting three stage victories, and he led both the points and mountains classifications at the start of the third week. Van Aert’s race and season ended, however, when he sustained a deep cut to his knee in a crash on the descent of the Collada Llomena on stage 16.
"With the three stages Wout won, we were really on a high and he was going for the mountains jersey and that was a whole other objective," Kuss said. "To be honest, when he had to abandon the race because of a crash, I think it was really hard for all of us, because we all missed that kind of focus, including myself. It was really hard to recalibrate after that."
