"You’re becoming a sprinter!" - Sepp Kuss jokes with Jonas Vingegaard after stage 1 of Criterium du Dauphiné 2025

Team Visma | Lease a Bike put in one of their best team performances of the season on stage 1 of the 2025 Criterium du Dauphiné on Sunday, with the likes of Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson helping to place team leader Jonas Vingegaard front and centre of all the action against his great rivals Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel. 

Although Vingegaard was ultimately beaten by Pogacar in the final sprint, spirits were clearly bolstered within the Visma team by their performance on the opening stage. Kuss, so often a loyal domestique for the Dane over the years, cut a beaming figure as he entered the Team Visma | Lease a Bike team bus afterwards, laughing and joking with Vingegaard, telling his team leader: "You’re becoming a sprinter!"

“We reckon Jonas, Matteo and Ben Tulett will be well placed in the general classification after the time trial (17.4 km, Wednesday), whereas it suits me a bit less,” Kuss added further in post-stage comments collected by French news outlet L'Equipe. “But the weekend stages are very hard and very short, so we’ll really be able to take risks and go all in.”

The aforementioned Jorgenson was especially active in the finale alongside Vingegaard, igniting a fight for bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint. “It was a good day on the bike — fun, entertaining. As long as there are seconds up for grabs, of course I’ll go for them,” explained the two-time Paris–Nice winner after the stage. “I enjoy it, and it makes the stage pass quicker.”

“No one should hold back to lose time, and if we can play with more cards, all the better. But in the end, I think the final days will be a showdown between the big favourites: Pogacar, Evenepoel and Jonas,” added Visma's DS Arthur van Dongen in conclusion, pushing the narrative of Jorgenson being a co-leader alongside Vingegaard. “He can play a key role.”