"It didn't go the way we wanted" - Disappointing outcome but Sepp Kuss proud of aggressive Jumbo-Visma tactics

Jumbo-Visma did everything right on stage 6 of the Tour de France. It set a mammoth pace on Tourmalet in which it isolated Tadej Pogacar and then Wout van Aert, who was in the breakaway, helped Jonas Vingegaard on the flat and on the first part of Cauterets. Sepp Kuss tells his thoughts post stage.

Kuss was part of the team's plans to toughen up the climb in the Tourmalet, after Wilco Kelderman. "We are very happy with how we did, I think everything went almost right, but I think after yesterday Pogacar is a fighter, congratulations to him, but I think we did a good job." The Dutch team set up and executed a perfect strategy, however today Tadej Pogacar was at the same level as Jonas Vingegaard, and the tactics in the end saw no gains towards their biggest rival. 

"We wanted to set a hard pace on the Tourmalet, it was all going to depend on the guys who went ahead, Jonas wanted to try to go solo, the usual two stayed and then from what I heard on the radio they both took a gamble, it was a great job by Wout [van Aert] as well," the American said in a post-race interview.

After a strong performance afterwards, arriving within the rest of the GC favourites in the final ascent to Cauterets, Kuss crossed the line in 14th place and has actually climbed into the Top10, now closing it 5:28 minutes down on his teammate Jonas Vingegaard, who has jumped into the lead of the race.

He believes that Pogacar's victory over Vingegaard was due to "small details" that should not make them dissatisfied with the extraordinary work done by the Jumbo-Visma men during the stage:

"You never want to lose those seconds, but we have to be happy with the intention we had, it didn't go the way we wanted, but it was because of small details, it could have gone in the opposite direction."