Defending Vuelta a España champion Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) fought hard to stay in contention on the fraught finale of stage 8 of this year’s race, but the American star finally lost more than a minute to stage winner Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
The US rider has now dropped to 6:22 down on overall leader Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), and trails Roglič by 2:32.
In a statement on his team’s website, Kuss described what happened when he and other riders were caught behind a crash sparked on a sharp right-hand corner onto the final climb at Sierra de Cazorla.
Kuss briefly regained contact with the rest of the GC favourites, but then shed time after Roglič launched repeated attacks.
“I felt good and we were well positioned as a team for the final climb”, Kuss said. “In the beginning of the climb I got held up by the crash, so I had to chase. I still tried to rejoin the group of favourites, but unfortunately, that just did not work out.”
Kuss’ teammate Edoardo Affini told Eurosport that the defending champion had been correctly positioned close to the front, only to fall victim of the pileup.
“He entered the climb correctly positioned and in the front 15,” Affini said. “But from what I could see [Alexandr] Vlasov [Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe] went down or had a mechanical, and Sepp was next to him.
“Sepp touched the ground briefly but he was quickly back up to the bunch again.”
Kuss' misfortune comes barely 24 hours after he was instrumental in helping teammate Wout van Aert claim a second win in the Vuelta, almost singlehandedly chasing down late breakaway Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) at the front of a small group en route to Cordoba.
He was expected to be a key player in the weekend’s mountains stage, but on day one at least, the crash on stage 8 left him out of contention and off to a bad start. It remains to be seen if stage 9 to Sierra Nevada is more favourable to Kuss as he battles to retain his GC options going into the second and third weeks.
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