ok here is my #GCKUSS edit 🖍️🎈🚗📮🛷
"Many people in my country still remember the era of Lance Armstrong. It would be nice if that image changed a bit" - Sepp Kuss on potential impact of his Vuelta victory
CyclingWednesday, 20 September 2023 at 10:23
For the first time in a decade, an American has emerged victorious at a Grand Tour with Sepp Kuss taking the Red Jersey at the Vuelta a Espana. Now, the 29-year-old is hoping to inspire more of his compatriots and regrow the sport Stateside.
"Of course it's not the Tour de France, but it is a big step forward. More and more people are realizing what it means for the United States," In de Leidestrui quotes Kuss as saying at a post-Vuelta a Espana press conference. "Hopefully I have also been able to inspire many people or offer new insights into the field of cycling. In any case, things are going well for American cycling, as guys like Matteo Jorgenson, Neilson Powless and Brandon McNulty are also showing great things."
Sadly, in the US, cycling is still viewed as a sport tarnished by the controversies of yesteryear with a black cloud hanging over professional bike racing. "Many people in my country still remember the era of Lance Armstrong. It would be nice if that image changed a bit," says Kuss. "However, I continue to find it difficult to say whether America really needs a new classification rider, because I am not sure how our love for racing will develop."
Kuss himself seemingly has no interest in swapping his more usual role of super domestique to the pressures of being a regular Grand Tour contender, especially not at the most well-known of cycling's races, the Tour de France. "That is really something different from the Vuelta. Moreover, the Vuelta is a round that simply suits me best. Things are much more nervous in the Tour. The transition stages in France are also much more difficult. The climbs also suit me less well, because they are generally less steep," he explains. "Probably I will be a super domestique again next year, although the role of joker is also close to my heart!"
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024