What a beautiful final two weeks of Grand Tour racing for 2023! This will be a long, hopefully banger essay due to my failure to write week two’s recap on its own, and my joy with the outcome of this Vuelta. Strap in, grab a beverage, and if you are like me, prepare to sob.
*All results and jersey standings courtesy of ProCyclingStats.com.
Stage 10: The longish, mostly flat Individual Time Trial was one of the fastest of length in history. Filippo Ganna smashed the course at 55.99km/hr to take the individual victory, 16 seconds ahead of Remco Evenepoel, who took expected time on the rest of the GC contenders. Primoz Roglic finished third, a closer-than-expected 20 seconds behind Remco. Jonas Vingegaard was far worse than expected, clearly not in July form, finishing 10th. Most importantly, Sepp Kuss rode the TT of his life to defend red by a large margin. He still had more than a minute on Remco following this stage, with Marc Soler kind of a pretender in second place at 26 seconds.
Stage 11: This unipuerto was a breakaway day with no GC action. It was still a pretty entertaining day. In the end, the wily tactician (who also pushes pretty solid watts and packs a serious sprint) Jesus Herrada won the stage out of the breakaway and spectacularly collapsed into the arms of his soigneur (who I believe was his father) in an image that was quickly memed as La Pieta by Michaelangelo by the hawks of Twitter, who do not miss a trick. Mr. Herrada is aptly named, to be sure, as he bears a striking resemblance to European depictions of the Messiah.
Stage 12: It was a sleepy sprint day won by Juan Sebastian Molano of Colombia and UAE Team.
Stage 13: An epic, and apparently brutal day out in the Pyrenees finishing on the Tourmalet in France. There was never really a breakaway with Jumbo-Visma tightly controlling the race from start to finish. The break would not have stood a chance, anyway. At the end of the day, Jonas Vingegaard soloed away on the Tourmalet and won with a 30 second margin over a flying… Sepp Kuss! Kuss had attacked the rest of the GC group and took more time as well as bonus seconds on his remaining competition. Roglic waited and launched a nuclear sprint to take third on the stage with a gap on everybody else. Jumbo-Visma had swept the podium of arguably the queen stage and made a strong case that they would sweep the final GC podium of this tour of Spain, as well as sweep all three Grand Tours of 2023, both accomplishments unprecedented in modern cycling. Remco had cracked early into the stage and lost nearly half an hour, more than eliminating him from GC contention. Almeida also lost a bucket of time. Only Ayuso in fourth place looked like he could pester the killer bees for the rest of the Vuelta, but with the way the men in yellow had crushed him on this stage, he would likely have to meekly settle for fourth. The main question remaining in the final week in this most unusual lap of Spain was “In what order will Jumbo-Visma decide their trident finishes on the final GC podium in Madrid?” I had my own strong feelings that Kuss more than deserved to occupy the top step, provided he did not full crack on the Angliru (Stage 17). This was the consensus on social media as well.
I should probably take an aside to explain my position here, because I have put a lot of mental energy towards attempting to solve this situation. In my approach to my own sporting career and even more so in elite competition, I am a ruthless competitor first and foremost. As Sepp himself said “There are no gifts.” Every athlete should strive to compete with 100 percent effort and the objective ought to be nothing less than to eviscerate all competition. This applies, of course, equally so to training. You do not win a Grand Tour or the Olympic 5k or the U.S. Open or whatever you are trying to do, without years of thousands of hours of prudent, yet brutal, training. Because of the insane dedication (setting aside for a moment, in our minds, the fact that nobody succeeds in elite sport without one in a million genetics) required to win at the highest level, I do not believe in gifts. Nor do I like to see lesser riders win due to luck or the big riders taking it easy.
All of that being said, as a close second to my competitiveness, I am a sportsman. I believe deeply that after the race ends or the final whistle sounds, competitors should warmly shake hands, accept defeat or victory, and move on. I see sportsmanship as a paramount element of competition, similar to the Christmas Truce in World War One…
In addition, this is a unique situation. Sepp has aided Primoz and Jonas to SIX Grand Tour victories in the past four years. He has helped them make millions of dollars and became national heroes in their own countries and in the folklore of cycling history. Sepp has been given the freedom to go for a few stages, but never once asked for a shot at the GC glory his leaders have always targeted. But even putting aside Sepp’s incredible humble, loyal demeanor, the fact in this Vuelta is that Sepp is flying. He is in better form than ever despite riding his third Grand Tour of the season and crashing hard late in the TDF and losing his high GC position in the biggest race of the season. In my view, at this stage of this Vuelta, riding for Sepp makes perfect sense tactically; it is not a gift. The strategy ought to be: use Jumbo-Visma’s domestiques to control the race and when the GC group is down to 5-10 riders, including the three J-V leaders, ride defensively to preserve Sepp’s GC lead. If he drops off the pace, of course Roglic and Vingegaard can go for the red jersey. But why do the two Galacticos need to attack their loyal American leftenant? That puts the final podium sweep at risk. As this post progresses, we will see how Jumbo-Visma’s management and the two traditional leaders’ strategy changed as the Vuelta simmered to a boiling point.
Stage 14: This was another hard mountain day with over 4,500 meters of elevation gain in just three climbs. Remco got himself in the breakaway to try to get something more out of his race which had basically gone up in smoke the day before, and took a well-deserved stage win in dominating fashion. The GC group rolled in almost 9 minutes behind with no changes to the top 10. It was around this point that I started to count down the days until Madrid for our Eagle of Durango, Sepp Kuss. I do not recall exactly when I started to believe he could really do it, but I should have been more in tune with the spectacle immediately following the TT and the Tourmalet.
Stage 15: Another breakaway stage without significant GC action was for Remco to try again. He was unsuccessful on this one, as he just did not have the legs he did the day before. Rui Costa won the sprint against Lennard Kamna and Santiago Buitrago for the stage win. Remco finished fourth.
Stage 16: After the second and final rest day came a short and fast unipuerto, which Jumbo-Visma decided to strangle. Despite the final climb suiting Roglic on paper, it was Vingegaard who attacked early and quickly opened a huge gap. Somehow, and likely in part due to some finessing in the GC group, Finn Fisher-Black of UAE was the closest chaser, giving away 43 seconds. The main GC contenders came in about a minute back of Vingegaard, with Kuss losing a few more seconds. At this stage of the race, Jonas was pretty clearly the strongest rider and occupying second in GC. But how would Jumbo ultimately play it with the Angliru the next day?
Stage 17: Despite major efforts from Remco and other strong climbers in the breakaway, Jumbo destroyed the race. In the end, on the hardest climb in Europe, their three leaders were yet again the three strongest riders in the race. But sadly Jonas and Primoz greedily rode away from their red jersey, the poor American Sepp Kuss. With a hair under 2 kilometers left in the stage, Sepp was losing his grip on the Vuelta as Roglic mashed the pedals with Jonas in his wheel. But Sepp did not quit. He churned up the ridiculous gradients and painfully limited his losses to his ruthless teammates to just 19 seconds, outsprinting Mikel Landa for third place to salvage some bonus seconds and miraculously his red jersey. In the front, Jonas gifted the victory to Roglic. Sepp led the Vuelta by 8 seconds from his teammates. At this point, it seemed that Jonas and/or Primoz would overtake Sepp the next day, on another savage mountain stage. Social (and traditional) media was in uproar about how seemingly unjustly it was all going to end…
Stage 18: The breakaway was uncontrollable and Remco was smashing the pedals all day. He would ride away to win the stage by nearly 5 minutes and the remnants of the break would straggle home for a while after that. But behind, Jumbo-Visma was on the front of the peloton. They had clearly made a tactical decision the night before that Sepp was going to win the Vuelta. Roglic and Vingegaard were pulling for the former domestique, now team leader and King of Spain-elect GC SEPP KUSS. When the winners of this year’s Giro d’Italia and Tour de France are your domestiques, you know you have made it as a cyclist. With the two strongest riders in the peloton at his disposal, Sepp was not going to lose this Vuelta, even with a 207km chaotic war looming on stage 20. I had begun to celebrate the first American Grand Tour victory in a decade, and by a non-doper to boot. Just please don’t crash at the end, Sepp.
Stage 19: The peloton went back to flat ground and Alberto Dainese took a quite surprising stage win.
Stage 20: 5 hours of mayhem with 10 classified climbs in the hills around Madrid was going to be one for the breakaway due to race dynamics. Nobody could really threaten the dominance of the men in yellow, and Ayuso in fourth place would risk more by attacking than he could gain. And with the united front around GC Kuss, there was absolutely no way that the top GC positions would shift at all. So it was looking like a Remco rampage again, and indeed he went into the break with three teammate engines to take the wind for him. With about 30 rivals in the breakaway though, it was not a done deal that he would win. After a full-gas day, finally a group of five would contest the final sprint. Wout Poels launched early and took the group by surprise, just barely holding off Remco at the line to win his first career Vuelta stage. The GC group behind was whittled down over time until only a few riders were left, but Sepp was shepherded safely across the line by his teammates, who gained my eternal respect, despite the begrudging nature of Roglic’s help, in particular.
Stage 21: The Madrid procession ended in a sprint won by Kaden Groves, his fourth stage win. Sepp Kuss crossed the line safely and won the 2023 Vuelta a Espana for Durango, Colorado and the United States. Jumbo-Visma swept the podium and won all three Grand Tours of 2023.
In one of the most beautiful moments in sport I had ever witnessed, the loyal domestique, eternal underdog, and perpetual nice guy conquered his favorite race and won a Grand Tour. I have never been happier with the outcome of a cycling race than this one. From an American perspective, I never dared to hope that this could happen so soon; I thought perhaps Magnus Sheffield or Matteo Jorgenson could work their way up the ranks and eventually grind out a watered-down Vuelta field in the late 2020s. Never in my wildest dreams was a 2023 Vuelta victory from Sepp freaking Kuss, a race which included three of the Big Six, on the cards. It just an absolute dream scenario, the shockwaves of which should ripple through the European peloton down through the lower ranks of American Cycling and inspire the next Lance Armstrong, who perhaps will have a better attitude than the legendary Texan did. And maybe, just maybe, we will all change our approach to cycling and broader life just a little bit and try to be more humble, loyal, and kind, just like Sepp is. Sometimes the good guys really do win. There are a bajillion more moral cliches to be written about the 200/1 victory of Sepp Kuss, but I will leave those to the true “experts”. But if the reader will spare me one more rambling thought, it is this: The lesson I take most from the 2023 Vuelta is that when you get your chance, you have to seize it with both hands and never let it go. As the Eminem song Lose Yourself goes: “Look, if you only had one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, would you capture it, or just let it slip?”
When Sepp Kuss rode into the breakaway on that fateful day of the 31st of August, 2023, he might have had dreams of a stage win. But I do not think even he believed, deep in his heart, that he was pedaling himself towards the victory of a Grand Tour. He did win the stage, but did not take the GC lead that day; instead it was the young Lenny Martinez who had his day in the sun. It was Stage Eight in which Sepp took red for good and held it all the way to Madrid.
I will never forget this race for as long as I live. The emotions were deep and I imagine they will be long-lasting. And as the sun begins to set on the 2023 cycling season, it is nearly time to reflect on all that has transpired, and all we’ve collectively felt both inside and outside of the peloton. But not yet. Pogi is building his form towards Il Lombardia, and other races are going off all the time. Riders young and old are succeeding (and failing) almost every day.
Every rider has a different story for every race. And no one could possibly hope to tell each one with the care it deserves. If that does not perfectly mirror the nature of humanity, all 8-plus billion of us, I do not know what does. It is actually as much what cannot be illustrated, as what can be, that makes cycling such a beautiful allegory for life.
Sepp Kuss alone knows what winning the Vuelta means to him, and what it took physically and mentally. And yet even he probably cannot remember all the minutiae of the sprint stages Kaden Groves won. And that is the way it should be. A Grand Tour is a lifetime that goes by in the blink of eye, with spectacular highs and lows but simply too much going on at all times to commit the whole thing to memory. The 2023 Vuelta is behind us, resigned to the Grand Tour Graveyard for eternity. It is up to us to keep its memory alive. And there is no shortage of content being churned out about the ethereal victory of the nicest guy in the peloton. I just have to hope my takes do not get lost in the wind. Long Live GC Kuss!
Puncheur 
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