Could be, I got confused when to start the stopwatch, I thought it was where they had the green banners, but then I realized it was just the littering area and might have started it a bit after the official start.

it looked to me like he was going flat out. bob roll seemed pretty sure kuss was getting hosed by his teammates. i tend to agree. i can't see that roglic and JV have done much so far to help their teammate in the red. i can't ever remember seeing a grand tour where a team had a leader who was clearly capable of keeping the jersey to the end, and whose teammates did so little to help. you'd think 2 guys who multiple grand tour wins under their belts would be a little more generous to the guy who's helped them get those jerseys.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

It will be really interesting to see how the remaining stages play out. TJV management say that don't care who wins as long as it's one of their own. They've essentially locked up the top 3 spots and it will be virtually impossible for someone to overtake any of them now, barring a catastrophic blowup by one of them. At this point there really is no need for Rog or Venga to be going up the road and not working for Kuss, but I suspect Venga will do so on tomorrow's finale, as it's probably the last opportunity to put any time into Kuss. If that happens and I were Kuss, I'd be really pissed off as there just is no need for it.

Ammatti just got this same 42:29 number for Rog/VEnga and I'm going to trust it as he is typically someone who jives with what I get usually. There are a few other sources who I think tend to overestimate things. Whatever the case, they were going up quickly today. Sepp/Landa doing 42:48 isn't half bad either!

After sifting through the erudite opinions expressed by my esteemed thread dudes, I still call BS on this "strategy".

I have no truck with Roglic going for the stage, but if they stay together he can go get it anyway.

There is not real threat to GC outside of their own team and the stage was theirs. If Landa hangs with them so be it. They could hit him at under 1k.

You just don't dump your teammate/race leader without cause. He did not crack. He is in the red jersey. A little respect, yo.

If I were were one of the yayhoos up on the mountain today I would have screamed at Sepp to stop being so fooking nice. Apparently he got on the horn and said, Go guys.

Ayuso showed some true youngster grit. He was dead man climbing. Chapeau.

Tomorrow will be interesting. If a break goes and with Ayuso and Mas well and truly completely out of the podium picture, there's no reason at all to drop Kuss except to attack Kuss. Assuming Kuss gets himself to within about 3K of the line in good shape, which seems likely. I've been Roglic and Venga fans to this point, including today, but if they put Kuss to the sword again tomorrow I'm all in as a Pog fanboi.

Roglic has to remember Kuss dragging him up the Angry Lou by the scruff of his neck...right?

i don't think he remembered that. but kuss is going to remember this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Quick math says Venga/Rog were doing in the 6.4 w/kg range for the effort. I didn't bother checking the whether or other factors. Ammati worked out that after the first 2.8km, Rog/Venga were matching Heras' pace essentially (maybe a second or two off). The watts from the Tour are re-appearing.

I'm really rooting for Kuss to carry Rojo until the finish. I understand that it's a little bit of a happy accident with the break he was in sneaking away and putting him into the leader jersey. And that he was hired and is paid to be the #1 domestique in the mountains for Jumbo's GC. I think he's expanded his comfort zone of what he thinks his possibilities are though, with how he's defended the jersey, with a solid TT and consistency in the mountains. He's even showed a little of a finishing punch, though not with the same zing that Remco or Primosz. I also get that winners want to win, and it's hard for Jonas to reign it in. But putting your own #1 helper to the sword, while he's solidly holding the leader's jersey against all of the other teams, is an a-hole move that will lead me to never root for Jonas again.

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I ride Felt.

So are all the fans. I’m with trail. If they drop Kuss, I’ll always root against them from now on. Winning the vuelta is not worth the negative PR that will live with them forever.

To the contrary, Vingegaard is halfway there in defending his reign as winner of the most recent Grand Tour winner.

He does have issues reining in his seemingly inexorable ambition though.

/pedantry alert (though this one actually useful).

6.4 W/kg is not bad. I always wonder if there is a bit of performance penalty when climbing such a steep hill due to lack of wind movement and overheating. But then, I have seen all climbs since 1998 and I don't ever remember it not being cool and cloudy which actually helps.

Hah! Deserved, as at one point long ago, I rode horses ( hunter/jumper ), so I should have gotten rein / reign correct. :)

Multi-tasking too much over my lunch break at work...

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I ride Felt.

I have mixed thoughts on this. To be clear, I 100% want Kuss to win for all the work he has done for Roglic and Vingegaard.

For Roglic and Vingegaard-to the hardcore fan, the fan will remember that they dropped Sepp Kuss. But to the layman, they will just remember how many tours Roglic and Vingegaard have won.

For Kuss- this could be life changing. To go from a domestique to a Grand Tour winner has huge life and financial implications.

This was all set up weirdly by TJV's plan of putting Kuss in the break and him holding on. In other tours, when non-team leaders held the jersey, there never was a question about what a team's plan was for that race. This has been blown up by Kuss holding on in the mountains and in the time trial.

He has to hold on for one more day in the mountains. I can't wait to watch. GO SEPP!

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(not to you particularly)
I think in a lot of ways Kuss has been very unlucky. Yesterday the attack by Jonas was almost certainly originally intended to soften everyone up for Roglic (it was literally a Primoz appreciation day finish) and well..just nobody even tried to reign him in, so on a stage that everyone had pegged to be about bonus seconds, Jonas takes a minute.
Then today, Primoz realizes (rightly) that this is his last chance to win the Vuelta/finish ahead of Jonas, (which I think he sees as a goal) so he puts in pretty much an all out effort. Jonas follows to the line (never saw him take a pull) and Roglic has to settle for a stage win... of course that also gaps Sepp, who is kind of in the friendly fire of these two.

Now we're in the position that Sepp "REALLY" needs some good luck in the next two mountain stages (the break to go and Landa/Mas/Ayuso/Rog to not be able to make a move in the GC group) or Jonas will leapfrog him. (That's assuming Jonas just responds to moves and does not attack him directly)

I think Primoz and Jonas both mean what they say in the interviews, but unless the team car is specifically calling them back, which isn't going to happen, I don't see either one waiting around / protecting Sepp once the racing gets going. (I also think Primoz may believe beating Jonas is necessary if he stays at TJV for him to ever have leadership in a GT Jonas wants to do... which obviously isn't reality as they will always back Jonas...but Primoz might believe it)

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

Not sure those changes necessarily would be such changes Sepp personally wants. He would the rest of his career be seen the way e.g. Thibaut Pinot was seen in France, "will he win the next GT?" and the pressure that comes with that. I'm not sure he wants that. He has been very clear earlier about it (the pressure and race style of being a GC-contender) not being something he wishes for.

I'm happy they race for it. It is sports, try to win.

Sepp's agent should be blowing up phones right now. I'm sure UAE or Ineos would make a nice buyout offer.

Not arguing with you. But only Sepp knows what next.

First, he could still win this. And fighting back and sprinting for bonus seconds today shows you he is prepared to fully earn this himself. There is a certain pride in saying I worked my ass all the way. He does not deserve to be attacked from here on out. If that happens, then I could see him wanting to look forward to a change of scenery sometime sooner rather than later.

But, winning is fun. Personally and as a team. And I would bet he would be the first to tell us that it sure feels great to have 6 GT's to show for turning himself inside out.

There is another dimension here beyond the 'fight it out on the road'. Kuss has been saying the right things publically - maybe too condesending - and may be too 'nice' to fight inside the team and out of the media - expressing a desire to keep the jersey. But, this is a special opportunity for him and he ought to recognize that few get to the position he is in right now. If Venga and/or Primoz continue to attack Kuss and Kuss winds up in 2nd or 3rd in the VaE, Kuss is likley to say, in public - hey, it's a team thing, happy that JV got all three grand tours, yada yada. Over the winter he will be less charitable about having JV teammates take the jersey from him. The interpersonal future dyanmic issues are not worth a single GT win for eithe Venga or Primoz. Could either win a GT with SK leading another GT star - Pogi? Venga and Primoz would be well served to ensure that SK wins in Madrid and continues to drag them up the toughest stages long into the future. No matter what SK says today, he will feel slighted/underappreciated if Venga and/or Primoz continue to attack him and win the jersey. That is a short term win for Venga or Primoz and a long term loss.

Thanks for taking it with good humor :)


Goodness, anything but the mess that is Ineos. Thomas (ageing but still brilliant on his day), Bernal (albeit his injury seemed to have permanently set him back a few crucial %), Pidcock (more of a pretender at the moment, but one never knows, also got the GB favoritism going for him), Daniel Martinez (Giro top-5), and Carlos Rodriguez (Tour top-5).

I'm also not sure if Pog would have behaved differently had he been in Vingegaard's shoes.

Lidl-Trek might actually not be a bad idea, help out/ share leadership position Tao Geoghegan Hart, who seems a lot more personable than some of the stone-cold reptile types. It's got American influence, and (from a purely self-interest perspective) perhaps I might get his autograph when he shows up in Madison for sponsorship obligations. I hear he's quite good at MTB, maybe he could be bothered to do Trek CX?

Good points.

People's memory is awfully short. Roglic was deemed somewhat washed last year, but it was washed Roglic whose bluff move forced Pog to chase early and eventually crack.

I get it, Kuss is perhaps at most 1.5% less strong compared to the other two. In any other team sport (association football comes to mind), he would mostly take up a facilitator role, while the other two would be similar to the star forwards. If Kuss the facilitator were on a hat-trick, it would almost be expected that the two other star forwards set him up for a goal, if passing to the facilitator represents as decent an opportunity as shooting. Only in cycling, do we get this, "let them eat what they kill" mentality.

Yes, getting a hat-trick is not on the same level as winning a grand tour, but Kuss doesn't get to shine in his own rights often and comes across as the type who would be happy to going back to doing yeoman's work afterwards.

The winningest team in the sport? Having won their third of three grand tours this season?
I'm not sure this is the PR mess some people think it is.
(And Kuss isn't going to whine about it.)

This reminds me of a local road race won by a well known and liked MidWest pro. The next day he broke away with a teammate in the crit, but sat up at the finish "for all his help the day before." Makes perfect sense to me, but my mother read that and basically saw the race as fixed.

The ONLY cycling conversation being had today is how fucked up TJV attacking their own teammate is. No one is talking about winning all the GTs nor 123ing the Vuelta. They are going to fuck this up and lose a whole lot of fans and most of the (tiny) American market.

Yep. Today.