Yeah, it's like the flyer the then-not-famous Carapaz took against Roglic and Nibbles. Carapaz never got that luxury again, and now even has a solid reputation as a dangerman ambush artist.

Speaking of which, good to see 'paz is finally getting his mojo back, seemingly.

That said even if the other non-JV GC contenders had decided to immediately chase Kuss that day, it likely would just end up in a reshuffling of the Kuss/Roglic/Venga ordering in the top 3. For a while it looked like UAE might be able to handle the trio with Ayuso/Almeida/Soler. But now it's very clear they never had a chance.

Taking the GC 1-2-3 and all 3 GTs is quite the thing. Not totally sure how I feel about that in general other than I am happy for Kuss and optimistic he keeps it together in Spain.

Thank you so much for spelling that correctly ("rogue" NOT "rouge")

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I have just seen the replay of the stage. Boooring as hell. Jumbo is too strong and that makes it so little interesting. I remember I stopped watching cycling when Team Sky was so dominant. This is the same.

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Spaniard. Sorry for my english for the sensitive ones :P

Who would not want to be a fly on the wall of JV's hotel last night? "OK, now everyone rides for Kuss until the finish. Oh, and it would be appreciated if you suffered a cramp in the last 500 m and lost a little time to the leader." Certainly appears to be a change relative to previous few stages. Why did JV leadership change the plan from 'everyone for themselves / let the road decide / the strongest should win' to 'let's ride as a team in support of the GC leader'? Super interesting - after the sh!tshow that we saw on the previous two stages and the comments from Venga and Primoz, I really expected Kuss to get attacked by his teammates again today.

What GC-contender will allow a domestique go up the road in the future, if the domestique can take the jersey at the end of the stage? No more racing to win for the GC-contender that grand tour.

Well there's a game theory to it. The whole reason for Kuss' attack was to bait Remco into chasing multiple attacks and then cracking. Remco had to make a choice. If he chooses not to chase, he risks giving up time to Kuss. If he does accelerate to close down Kuss, as soon as he catches him, Roglic or Venga is going to immediately launch over the top.

He chose not to chase hard, which I think was smart. Of course we knew very quickly that same day that Remco wasn't a huge threat that day - he lost around a minute. But Jumbo didn't know that when they sent Kuss.

Of course Soler tried the same thing a bunch of times as he always does. But no one paid much attention to Soler because he has little credibility to sustain the same level of performance over three weeks.

This was a rather unusual situation. Most domestiques are not GC threats. And, many GC candidates can’t spare their top mountain domestique without imperiling their own GC hopes.

Not to mention that these days, in most grand tours, Jumbo and Pog are racing to win every day, even the flat ones!

Very rare situation here that isn't unprecedented, but is rare.

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"It's good enough for who it's for" - Grandpa Wayne

Bingo.

And this is pretty much the same method TJV utilized to crack Pog in 2022, by forcing him to repeatedly close down Roglic's speculative moves.

I am sure that JV thought 'no way SK can hold that lead after the time trial'. That's the only type of stage where 'attacking your teammate in the leader's jersey' is OK. Even if SK lost no/little time on the road stages, it would seem that superior TT ability of Primoz and/or Venga would more than negate SK's lead from the breakaway. Except...that didn't happen...

If you want to hear an interesting podcast where SK is interviewed and some questions may be answered, listen to the Life in the Peloton pod by Mitch Docker. It was obviously done before the Vuelta but some interesting questions get asked and answered.
https://lifeinthepeloton.podbean.com/...oton-with-sepp-kuss/

Gesink coming in hot...

“If we followed social media for our tactical plan then we wouldn’t be as good as we were,” he told GCN.
“I don’t know what happened today but we’re 1,2,3 and Sepp is in red so I’m a bit tired of all this bullshit. We’re winning five stages and I’m working my ass off and I don’t feel like I have to explain to you how our tactical plan is. Sepp is in the lead and he’s one of my best mates and I hope that he keeps it until Madrid. I’m a bit tired of all these questions.”
“We all know what’s going on and I don’t think it’s fair,” Gesink said in light of the criticism coming Jumbo-Visma’s way. “We’re all doing a good job here and we’re winning five stages. Sepp is in the lead and the others are just behind. I think that we’re doing the best Vuelta performance everyone has ever seen and I’m not going to explain tactical ideas, and especially not based on what people think.”
Gesink also suggested that Kuss was leading the race because of the team’s tactical acumen and that it wasn’t fair to criticise the squad’s tactics. With three days remaining in the race stage 18 felt like a pivotal moment, with both Roglič and Vingegaard operating on different wavelengths than they had shown previously.
“We went into this race with a clear two captain situation and Sepp did a great job with our tactical plan, which we made ourselves," Gesink said. "That put him in this position in the first place, now it’s a bit easy to complain about our tactical plans once Sepp has red after getting red because of our tactics. It’s a circle."

Listened on the way to work, that was great. Thank you.

Perfect training plan night before his TJV audition Physiology Test.

The real issue here is that Remco imploded in the 2nd week. If he hadn't then SK would have been left behind on this weeks mountain stages as the real team leaders would need to do their job to keep the red jersey.

Now that Remco has the mountain jersey sealed up, any chance he tries to snipe the points classification?

This is pretty well done, but it's gotta be black, Tony

https://enduranceconspiracy.com/...uss-army-uniform-tee

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I don't think so. Several times over the past few days when rolling over the bonus points sprint lines, he made zero effort to get to the front of the break even though no one in the break cared if he did. He was completely ignoring sprint points. Maybe even intentionally minimizing the points he got in order to not have Alpecin making it harder on him to get into breaks.

I hope Groves is OK. He got taken out by his own leadout man today, and it wasn't a light crash. I feel bad for the leadout guy. The EF train came flying up on his left, and he clearly had no idea as he veered slightly left to look back to check on Groves. Crossed wheels with the EF train.

i know i am a bit behind here but my initial thought was that Jonas was being a bit of a d**k by following Rog up the Angliru; but after what happened yesterday i wonder if he was policing the Rog attack for Kuss. Basically letting Rog know that he can push on up the mountain all he wants, create as big a gap to Sepp as he can, but even if he does that he still isn't going to win the Vuelta because he (Jonas) is ahead of him on GC and will sit on his wheel to the end. So Rog was given the option of backing off a tad and Sepp staying in red, or pushing on and having Jonas in red...which would explain why the gap to Sepp didn't go out after the initial break. i genuinely think Jonas is ok with Sepp winning the Vuelta as he sees this race as a "bonus" that he hasn't done much training for, and came into it without very high expectations or great form. i think Rog resents it as he was going to be the protected rider, and showed in the TT that he was on great form, probably a bit stronger than Jonas.

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And the question remains. where were you.

I'm late to all of this, but Groves actually hopped off in the crash and landed in stride somehow to save things from being worse. Once he got his bike, he went to protect the rider on the ground and check on him, which impressed me. Obviously his sprint was gone, but the gesture was nice.

I wonder how the fallout from the Hessman issue is going to affect the future view of this 3 GT achievement. Although that has been unusually quiet since it came out, in comparison to other doping related scandals.

I haven't seen which diuretic it is yet. i think that if it is spironolactone, and it is a case of a 22 year old kid using something for acne that they didn't check was ok to take (same drug as Allie Ostrander - the popular young(ish) runner was banned for taking) it is very different to a positive test for something that could only be being used as a masking agent. Although it is hard to see why police would search a house if it was the former.

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And the question remains. where were you.

A 22 year old kid with a contract and full medical supervision, being warned about what not to do on a daily basis etc.

CVV posted on TwiXter

https://x.com/...oaykG2jdy6f96hKZq8KQ

That's more like it!!!

No link to purchase that I could find, however

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Good point. Nice contrast to the sometimes even acrimonious reactions we would see.

"Acrimonious Reactions" sounds like a hardcore band name or album title

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin