Johan Bruyneel: "Jumbo sees Evenepoel as a threat and they will try to keep Kuss in the lead for as long as they can"

Sepp Kuss has become the first American to lead a Grand Tour in one of 'every and the third in history to wear the red jersey of the Vuelta a España. Johan Bruyneel, on Youtube channel The Move the Lance Armstrong, analyzed the Jumbo-Visma rider's feat.

"Incredible performance from Sepp already in the stage he won and about yesterday's stage Jumbo had a plan, they thought Lenny Martinez wasn't going to be able to hold on and Sepp was going to be able to take the red jersey and apart from that they were going for the stage," he said. "I am very impressed in him, that he is able to maintain such a high level, I think he has the highest level of the three grand tours. It's difficult to compare the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta, but he's at a very high level."

It should be remembered that this year Sepp was instrumental in Primoz Roglic's win at the Giro d'Italia and Jonas Vingegaard's at the Tour de France, so he is facing his third major of the campaign. Bruyneel believes Jumbo wanted to reward Kuss for his work:

"I think it was a goal of Jumbo-Visma to try to give the lead to Kuss as a reward of all the work he's been doing in the last few years, you could see that Vingegaard and Roglic were very happy for him, he's a very special guy in the team and they wanted to give him something, and to be leader of a grand tour I think is the ultimate prize you can get as a domestiques because he always thinks of his teammates first," the Belgian argues. 

He was asked if Kuss can win the Vuelta and reasoned that Kuss is not a rider mentally prepared to lead a team, but that obviously with red the situation could change: "Let's see now that he's leading the race. It's a very long way to Madrid, he has more than two minutes over the other guys in the overall. Personally I think he's going to have with the mentality, I think Kuss doesn't have and doesn't want to have the attitude, the mindset of a leader, this is going to change now."

"But in my opinion Vingegaard and Roglic are still the leaders of Jumbo-Visma. Let's see now what is going to happen in the big mountain stages of Tourmalet and Angliru, those two climbs are going to be very hard and especially in the time trial. Historically a climber like Kuss has lost a minute every 10 kilometers, but with the condition and motivation he has, he might last longer."

In any case, he thinks that Jumbo-Visma will try to continue playing with the trump card of having three leaders, especially seeing how strong Remco Evenepoel was in Xorret de Catí:

"I think Jumbo-Visma is going to try to keep him in the lead as long as they can to have a third card to play with. Especially because they've seen that Remco Evenepoel was probably the strongest on the Xorret de Catí climb, he's a big threat, so what better situation to have 3 guys up front. 2 is good, but with Sepp Kuss it's better."