Kuss Soars up Vuelta a España GC on Final Mountain Stage

2023 Vuelta a España winner Sepp Kuss pulled out one of his best performances since that victory when he surged up the GC on Saturday.

The Coloradan started the day 11th overall, 11:04 behind the race leader Enric Mas. He was aggressive for much of the Queen stage, leaping clear on the first ascent of the Puerto de El Purche with more than 100km to go.

While Richard Carapaz surged soon afterwards and joined him, prompting Felix Gall to close them down by the summit, Kuss kicked again on the second time up El Purche and started gaining real time.

“From the days before we knew that I wouldn’t be able to jump in the early break,” he later explained. “The plan was to go for the stage win, but you can never control the distance the break has. So already before the first time on Purche there was a really big gap, but I had nothing to lose.

“I knew I had a bunch of strong teammates ahead and they just went all in. The guys were amazing. It never felt like I was alone.”

Teammate Wout van Aert was, along with Ivo Oliveira (UAE Emirates-XRG), aggressive from the race start and sparked off a big breakaway group. He chased KOM points and took the intermediate sprint, while behind Jørgen Nordhaagen, Steven Kruijswijk, Matthew Brennan and Bruno Armirail got into the first chase group.

The plan comes together perfectly

Having teammates up the road helped him gain more and more time once they linked up, with Van Aert dragging the group alone and Nordhaagen helping a tiring Kuss on the final climb.

“Hats off to the team, we had a plan,” he said. “It was just like the stars aligning in every moment of the race, and every single guy on the team had a part in it. That is how we race as a team, that is our identity, I guess. It was just amazing being part of it.”

The stage win was out of the question by then, with Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) going on to take his first victory in many years. Kuss still had plenty to race for as he was overtaking more and more riders in the GC.

He eventually reached the line 4:35 behind Landa but 2:02 in front of Gall, the best from the GC group behind. Mas was a further 17 seconds back.

His time gain saw him soar to fifth, overtaking six other riders.

He’s 8:45 off the race lead and with Carapaz 1:51 ahead of him and Oscar Onley 43 seconds behind, he is likely to finish fifth overall in the race on Sunday.

If so, it will be the second-highest GC result of his career after his 2023 victory.

It comes after he won stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia and finished third on stage 20 of the Tour de France. Just as was the case in 2023, riding two Grand Tours prior to the Vuelta helps him to unlock his best GC performances.