In a season filled with bad luck for
Team Visma | Lease a Bike, things had started to look up when an all star lineup was announced for the 2024
Tour de France. Sadly, illness has struck again with Vuelta a Espana champion
Sepp Kuss forced to drop out of the team.
Kuss, widely regarded as the best super domestique in the entirety of the peloton has been a key figure in
Jonas Vingegaard's back to back Maillot Jaune wins at the last two editions of the Tour de France and with the Dane entering this year's Grand Boucle untested having not raced since crashing out of the Itzulia Basque Country, Kuss' absence is a blow Vingegaard could easily have done without.
"This is of course very hard for Sepp in the first place. His contribution is always very important in the team, but then of course he has to be completely fit," analyses Team Visma | Lease a Bike sports director
Merijn Zeeman to the team's
official website of the difficult decision. "Unfortunately, we had to conclude together today that this is insufficiently the case, after Covid. He now needs to recover properly and will therefore not start. Fortunately, we have a good replacement ready with
Bart Lemmen."
Go directly to the Fantasy
Tour de France and create your own Fantasy team. At least 12.350 USD/11.500
Euro/9,700 GBP in prizes! As mentioned there, second year pro and former air force officer Bart Lemmen will get himself a Tour de France debut as a result of Kuss' misfortune. A career defining moment for the 28-year-old Dutchman. "Despite only being a professional for 1.5 years, Bart is already proving to be a very reliable and strong rider," Zeeman says, full of praise for Lemmen. "He learns quickly and proved it this year with several good classifications. He is a good climber, and he willingly sacrifices himself for his leader Jonas Vingegaard. I have a lot of confidence in Bart."
Actually this could be good for Visma and Matteo. Now Matteo can slot in where Sepp would have been as last man in the mountains. If Matteo is up to it, Matteo can be within seconds or minutes of Jonas. If Jonas falters then Visma's plan B (Matteo) is ready.
Plays well to American audiences too for commercial and media purposes.
Erm, Sepp is also an American...
Yeah but he’s less Slovenian ;-)
No seriously, Sepp is less exploitable American media-wise so they’ll be happy for a new sweetie, it’s like choosing between how to market and create buzz with either David Byrne or that woman everyone is now using to discuss every single current topic because she’s so mainstream as to be useable for anything.
Dang, what about those effective vaccines for Covid? Oh yes it would have been worse.
Not good, Sepp has been sick most of his season this far, really bad luck. Maybe he can help Jonas win the Vuelta this year.
Maybe he can repeat at the Vuelta, in this case.
Hope so. That would be a good way to end an undercooked season.
Kuss was nowhere near his 23‘ form this year anyway! This is prolly an improvement!
Thank you, for repeating pretty much exactly what I said
Damn! we vibing or what!! 🙌🏽 🤜🏼🤛🏼
Based on past years, a huge blow. However, Kuss has been so bad this year that Lemmen is probably an improvement