Tour of Spain (La Vuelta) - Bicycling

[Full Speed Ahead]

If you're at all into bike racing, you should check out the Tour of Spain right now. Pretty exciting stuff happening with Sepp Kuss. For those of you who don't watch, Sepp Kuss is an American who is the premier support guy in the world of cycling, he's the main person who helps others win the big races, what they call a "domestic". He's the guy who gets the water bottles and feed bags from the support cars and carries them to his teammates, and rides in critical stages of the races to the front so his teammates can ride easily in his draft saving their energy for the last steep climb or sprint. This particular race it worked out so that Sepp's in the lead, and instead of his two main teammates turning the favor and supporting him, yesterday they tried to crush him. It didn't work. Sepp's still in the lead.This was done after years of Sepp giving everything up in terms of personal wins to help those teammates win. The race is coming down to the final stage - here's to you Sepp, hang on to the jersey (and next year, try to get on a new team...) !!!

 

[Ogee Ogilthorpe]

If you're at all into bike racing, you should check out the Tour of Spain right now. Pretty exciting stuff happening with Sepp Kuss. For those of you who don't watch, Sepp Kuss is an American who is the premier support guy in the world of cycling, he's the main person who helps others win the big races, what they call a "domestic". He's the guy who gets the water bottles and feed bags from the support cars and carries them to his teammates, and rides in critical stages of the races to the front so his teammates can ride easily in his draft saving their energy for the last steep climb or sprint. This particular race it worked out so that Sepp's in the lead, and instead of his two main teammates turning the favor and supporting him, yesterday they tried to crush him. It didn't work. Sepp's still in the lead.This was done after years of Sepp giving everything up in terms of personal wins to help those teammates win. The race is coming down to the final stage - here's to you Sepp, hang on to the jersey (and next year, try to get on a new team...) !!!

To their credit, Sepp's team Jumbo Visma did change course yesterday and support him to the finish line, specifically Roglic and Jonas V. If you listen to Armstrong's podcast, The Move, they lay out a fairly compelling case that the events of the stage the other day, where it looked like Roglic and Jonas V attacked Kuss, actually made sense but some of the things that they anticipated to happen with those attacks (like UAE's response) just did not happen. It was an interesting theory, who knows if that's what actually happened.

No doubt, Kuss is the ultimate domestique and is appreciated by his teammates; he's one of the most popular guys in cycling and he's rightfully going to win the red jersey in this year's Vuelta. A huge thing for American cycling, if only more people were watching.

It's been a fun tour to watch. The cycling events are the only reason I have Peacock and other than a few glitches it's been great watching La Vuelta and the Tour de France; the only gripe is there is often a fairly lengthy "dead period" where you can't access that day's race at all, like from the end of the broadcast to about 6-7 hours later, depending on the day.

As far as getting his own team, I'm pretty sure Kuss has one more year on his contract with Jumbo. The Jumbo dominance was cool for a while, a relief after watching Ineos dominate, but it's time for another team to step up!

 

[fan of Ray Williams]

Yeah, Jumbo Visma in the first three spots in GC is unreal.

 

[Ogee Ogilthorpe]

Had to listen to the final few episodes of The Move podcast, discussing not just La Vuelta recap but also possible movements of riders with certain teams.

Decent speculation of the group that Primos Roglic could be on a different team next year despite having a year (I think?) left on his contract; speculation would be that he could be bought out by Ineos Grenadiers. Despite Ineos having some of the deepest pockets of any team in cycling, they don't currently have a TRUE contender for winning any of the top 3 Grand Tours; the Giro, The Tour and La Vuelta. They've got some strong young riders, some guys that could contend for the podium, but certainly not win it all.

That would be pretty amazing actually, as Primos is arguably one of the top 3 grand tour riders in the world right now with Jonas V and Pogacar.

Lots of rumors about what went down in the team bus with Jumbo during some of those last several mountain stages, whether they wanted to support Sepp Kuss to stay in the red jersey or let Primos and/or Jonas V try to overtake him.

The latest rumor was that Jonas V was on board with keeping Kuss in the red jersey with almost a week left and it was some of the team members, like Primos, that disagreed. Interesting. Puts Jonas V in a much better light and makes Roglic look like the bad guy here.

I guess there are rumors out there about Ineos buying the Soudal Quickstep team but that sounds less and less likely.

It would be nice to see the Jumbo team broken up a little bit before next season. They are just too strong, and I guess they've picked up at least one more really strong rider. It would be nice to see another team making a run.

 

[GopherJake]

Had to listen to the final few episodes of The Move podcast, discussing not just La Vuelta recap but also possible movements of riders with certain teams.

Decent speculation of the group that Primos Roglic could be on a different team next year despite having a year (I think?) left on his contract; speculation would be that he could be bought out by Ineos Grenadiers. Despite Ineos having some of the deepest pockets of any team in cycling, they don't currently have a TRUE contender for winning any of the top 3 Grand Tours; the Giro, The Tour and La Vuelta. They've got some strong young riders, some guys that could contend for the podium, but certainly not win it all.

That would be pretty amazing actually, as Primos is arguably one of the top 3 grand tour riders in the world right now with Jonas V and Pogacar.

Lots of rumors about what went down in the team bus with Jumbo during some of those last several mountain stages, whether they wanted to support Sepp Kuss to stay in the red jersey or let Primos and/or Jonas V try to overtake him.

The latest rumor was that Jonas V was on board with keeping Kuss in the red jersey with almost a week left and it was some of the team members, like Primos, that disagreed. Interesting. Puts Jonas V in a much better light and makes Roglic look like the bad guy here.

I guess there are rumors out there about Ineos buying the Soudal Quickstep team but that sounds less and less likely.

It would be nice to see the Jumbo team broken up a little bit before next season. They are just too strong, and I guess they've picked up at least one more really strong rider. It would be nice to see another team making a run.

I sent your post to a buddy who lives and breathes this stuff. His response:

Ya, internal team politics. Primos is a really good rider, a champion of several grand tours. And champions like to win.

The biggest issue is, if Primos wants to race Tour, he’ll need to go to another team. Jonas has shown he can win the Tour, so there’s no way they’ll put Primos on the Tour squad. Sepp will go b/c he can ride in support of Jonas without feeling like he needs to win.

And with Sepp showing he can win the Vuelta, it’s down to the Giro for Primos… which he won this year. I think Primos wanted to win the Vuelta this year b/c it would be his 4th GC win, tying the record for most GC wins at the Vuelta

We’ll see what happens in the next couple months

 

[Ogee Ogilthorpe]

I sent your post to a buddy who lives and breathes this stuff. His response:

Ya, internal team politics. Primos is a really good rider, a champion of several grand tours. And champions like to win.

The biggest issue is, if Primos wants to race Tour, he’ll need to go to another team. Jonas has shown he can win the Tour, so there’s no way they’ll put Primos on the Tour squad. Sepp will go b/c he can ride in support of Jonas without feeling like he needs to win.

And with Sepp showing he can win the Vuelta, it’s down to the Giro for Primos… which he won this year. I think Primos wanted to win the Vuelta this year b/c it would be his 4th GC win, tying the record for most GC wins at the Vuelta

We’ll see what happens in the next couple months

If all 3 of them stay, I don't think anything changes next year; Primos will be the lead horse for the Giro and probably the Vuelta with Kuss riding in support. Not sure if Kuss races all three grand tours again next year, that was almost super human. It was a little bit of an outlier how Kuss ended up red after Stage 8, Jumba certainly didn't plan it that way. But he earned the red jersey and he kept it. Kuss will definitely be riding the Tour de France in support of Jonas V, above all else.

Like I said, I'm all for some riders shuffling teams, evening things out a little bit. If Roglic somehow made it onto Ineos and wanted to race the Tour next summer, I could see rooting for Roglic in that scenario.

I'm a huge Trek guy, all my bikes are Trek (except my TT/Tri bike) but it seems the Lidl-Trek team is mostly content gearing up for the sprint stages in the grand tours with riders like Mads Pedersen. It would be cool if they were more relevant on the grand stage but I'm content with them just making phenomenal bikes

 

[fan of Ray Williams]

Looks like Amazon will help with sponsoring Jumbo-Visma

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