Armstrong and Hincapie on Jumbo-Visma's dominance: "INEOS and UAE must be racking their brains on how to beat this monster team"

Lance Armstrong returned to his podcast The Move to analyze with Johan Bruyneel and George Hincapie the victory of Sepp Kuss in the Vuelta a España. The cyclist highlighted his compatriot's triumph and the success of Jumbo-Visma during a historic 2023.

"It's wonderful, it's extraordinary for American cycling, he's a guy we don't know but he looks very good, a great opportunity. Beyond that, for a team to get to win in the same year is something that has never happened before and it's incredible."

Johan Bruyneel, who was highly critical for some days of Jumbo's strategy, acknowledged that the media may have been too hasty in speculating about what was going on in the Dutch team's inner workings: "We speculated during the Vuelta about what was going on inside the team, but in the end I guess we were speculating too much and add and win, Jumbo's slogan, has never been as real as it was in the recently finished Vuelta. It's the team of reference, the best in the world, what Sky was at the time, if you ask any young rider what team they want to ride for, that's the one they're going to want to go to."

George Hincapie, delving into the difference between Jumbo and the rest of the teams at the moment, brought up an important point, that they are not better because of an economic issue:

"The other big teams like INEOS or UAE have to be busting their heads thinking how we can beat this monster team, I assume they have similar budgets, so it's not a question of budget when we talk about these teams, so they have to rethink how they can compete with these guys in the three grand tours."

Armstrong continued with the argument of the big teams: "UAE, INEOS and Jumbo are way ahead of the rest of the teams, but yes now one team in particular is in the stratosphere, so the other two superteams are saying to each other what happened, because it seems to have happened fast, they have to be racking their brains."

Bruyneel pointed out that, in fact, INEOS Grenadiers has much more money than the rest: "INEOS has the biggest budget by far, probably 10 million more than the second team. They've been very successful for 7-8 years and now during this Vuelta they haven't done anything, in the Tour they weren't close either. Jumbo knows what they are doing, they have it all down to the millimeter in the Dutch style and, they try to hire the best in every little sector of the sport. Merijn Zeeman is the man who pulls the strings and the one who has managed to create the team."