Sepp Kuss isn't where he was a year ago on the Vuelta a España but then this isn't last year's Vuelta a España. This has been a strange kind of a race, where simply staying in the hunt through an unruly opening week often felt like half the battle.
There have been fluctuating fortunes for just about all the contenders for final victory, including Ben O'Connor, the man currently almost four minutes clear atop the overall standings. Several have fallen by the wayside altogether, too, including João Almeida, who withdrew with COVID-19, and Antonio Tiberi, forced out by heat stroke.
Amid that maelstrom, Kuss' race has ebbed and flowed in its own way. He conceded ground on the first summit finish at Pico Villuercas but then enjoyed an impressive cameo in support of teammate Wout van Aert in Cordoba. A crash before the final climb to Cazorla on stage 8 could have ruined his Vuelta, but he limited his losses as best he could.
Kuss bled a little more time in Granada on stage 9, but he looked comfortable in the red jersey group when the race resumed in Galicia on Tuesday after the long, long transfer north. On a day when his Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Wout van Aert claimed stage honours from the break, Kuss reached Baiona safely with the rest of the podium contenders.
As the Vuelta approaches its midpoint, Kuss lies 14th overall, 8:16 down on O'Connor and 4:23 behind his old teammate Primož Roglič. Most observers would view the defending champion's glass as half-empty. Kuss, however, might argue that the most important thing at this point is simply still to be clutching a glass at all.
"If I just look to myself, I was pretty happy with the first week," Kuss said in Ponteareas ahead of stage 10. "I was consistent all the days. I never had that extra bit to really be there with the best guys, but I never had a bad, bad day either. On stage 9, I didn't have the best feeling, but I was happy and surprised that I made it through like I did. It's still something to build on."
It's still unclear, however, precisely what Kuss can assemble from his Vuelta over the remaining eleven stages. After COVID-19 ruled him out of the Tour de France, Kuss warmed up for this race with victory at the Vuelta a Burgos, but he has not quite replicated that form in the main event, where he set out as Visma's outright leader after his uneasy coexistence with Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard a year ago.
The recurring motif of this Vuelta, however, has been riders clawing their way back into the reckoning with long-range attacks. After O'Connor soloed into the maillot rojo in Yunquera, both Adam Yates and Richard Carapaz firmly re-entered the GC battle on the road to Granada on Sunday. Kuss, who laid the foundations of his 2023 Vuelta victory with his own effort from a distance at Javalambre, will surely seek out a similar opportunity in the days ahead.
"A lot of it is just about seeing what happens in the moment – and also having the legs," Kuss said. "Because if you go for it and commit, then you have to have really good legs to do it.
"I just have to see if there are opportunities that come up either to make up some time or try to win a stage. So far, this Vuelta has been pretty crazy almost every other day. So I'm just looking for those days and seeing what I can make out of it."
Not the Tour
The ecosystem of this Vuelta appears to lend itself to GC men trying their luck from a distance. The absence of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard has made this race far less of a closed shop than the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, while O'Connor's hefty overall lead means that Decathlon-AG2R might allow attackers a significant degree of latitude.
"It's definitely not like the Tour, where you have every single team with their best riders. It's still a really talented and deep field but there are fewer dominant teams I would say, and that makes the racing in my opinion a bit more interesting," said Kuss. "And Decathlon know they have a large gap over the other favourites, so it's less on them to control it."
Even so, Decathlon were diligent in scanning the early attacks on stage 10 for potential threats, and it took a ferocious opening hour of racing before Van Aert and company eventually managed to amass a winning lead. For most of the peloton, Kuss included, the opening ascent of the Alto de Fonfría turned into an ordeal.
"The first climb was hard, I was suffering a bit, but I knew I just had to blow out the cobwebs a bit and then I'd feel more in the rhythm," said Kuss.
Before the stage, Kuss had warned that the succession of climbs in the finale could provoke frissons among the GC. Instead, there was a truce of sorts, with only EF Education-EasyPost making a brief attempt to break up the race on the final ascent of Alto de Mougás.
"We did an almost identical final in 2021, so if a team had taken it up on the third to last climb, there would probably have been some gaps," Kuss said. "But until halfway up the last climb, it was a pretty controlled pace."
With the overall contenders content to reach Baiona together, the day instead belonged to Kuss' teammate Van Aert, who collected his third stage win of the race and cemented his lead atop the points standings. "With Wout here, he always makes the team better," Kuss said. "Without him, it would be sure for a different dynamic. You always want him to be here."
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