"It’s gonna be a really hard day, everyone is gonna go all in" - Sepp Kuss faces one final challenge before Vuelta victory is assured

With the Jumbo-Visma team dynamics having been straightened out, perhaps the biggest threat to Sepp Kuss securing overall victory at the 2023 Vuelta a Espana is an untimely crash. As such, the American is refusing to count his chickens before they've hatched.

Stage 19 may have seemed like a calm, relatively stress-free day for the peloton but when you are this close to your biggest-ever win, nothing is easy. "These days are more stressful now. Normally, I just sit at the back and ride to the finish line but now there’s a bit more to lose," Kuss told La Vuelta in a post-stage interview. "The guys helped me really well today, we were always up front and another day done. The pace was okay. Sometimes it’s better to keep a bit of tension on the legs. It was always kind of an annoying wind from the side so it wasn’t too too easy."

As mentioned, perhaps the biggest threat to Kuss' Red Jersey is a crash. Having hit the deck on the penultimate stage of the Tour de France, the American knows all to well how these innocuous incidents can prove costly. "I think in these stages where it’s more relaxed along the day, people take risk and crash in the end but we stayed out of trouble," he explains.

Although stage 20 is expected to be a day for the breakaway, the Classics-esque profile of the stage means Kuss cannot afford to switch off. "It’s quite a few climbs tomorrow! But we have a really strong team and we can go into tomorrow with a lot of confidence," he previews. "It’s gonna be a really hard day, everyone is gonna go all in."