Analysis: Hierarchies become clear as Jumbo-Visma drop Sepp Kuss on the Angliru

Sepp Kuss has been clear that he isn’t expecting any gifts at this Vuelta a España, and on his birthday of all days, his Jumbo-Visma teammates made it clear that nothing of the sort is on the cards.

Read more: Sepp Kuss expects 'no gifts' from Roglic and Vingegaard at Vuelta a España

But whilst Kuss may not be expecting to be simply handed a Grand Tour win - for stronger riders to sacrifice their own chances for a weaker leader, or give him a victory he doesn’t deserve - what happened on the fearsome slopes of the Alto de l’Angliru was the complete opposite of a gift.

Going into the final 2km of the stage, the situation looked perfect for the GC leaders. Kuss, Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič had dropped all of their other rivals, Kuss was holding on, he was at the front of the race, and there were no other teams even close to taking the jersey.

Jumbo-Visma could have ridden for their leader, delivered him to the finish in red, and one of Roglič or Vingegaard could have won the stage as a reward. The Vuelta is won, they’re going to take a clean sweep on the podium after one of the most powerful Grand Tour displays in history. But that wasn’t what happened.

Instead of riding for Kuss, Roglič and Vingegaard rode for themselves. They set a high pace, and as soon as Kuss couldn't hold on, there was no hesitation - they pushed on, and hard. The American showed one crack, and his two teammates took this not as a moment to help, but as a sign that they could now up the tempo. At this point, he didn't so much drop, but get dropped.

Read more: Primoz Roglič leads Jumbo-Visma 1-2-3 atop Alto de l'Angliru

The events on the road are perhaps the easiest part of the day to decipher. It is from each rider's post-race reactions - where they attempted to stick to the same narrative - that we can glean small nuggets of what's going on between the leaders.

"I said to him 'keep fighting, keep believing', and he will make it,” Roglič said at the finish, perhaps an odd thing for a teammate to say as they ride away from you. It would be easy to say that Kuss should not have to fight to limit his losses to his teammates, they should be there fighting with him.

“Halfway up the climb, Jonas told me ‘Sepp, you’re going to win’, I said ‘We’ll see’,” Kuss said, suggesting none of the riders knew exactly how it would play out. “Roglič felt super good and just rode amazing. I tried to stay with him as long as I could, and then just limit the damage in the end.”

It’s hard to tell if Roglič, who sat on the front for the whole remainder of the stage after dropping Kuss, was working for himself or for Vingegaard. The Dane never took a turn on the front, but it’s difficult to say if that was Roglič towing his new leader to the line, or trying and failing to drop him too. The dynamic between the Giro and Tour winners may be difficult to decipher, but it remains clear that they certainly weren’t working for the red jersey.

Equal freedom or Kuss at the bottom of the pile?

It appears now that Jumbo-Visma are adopting an ‘every man for himself’ policy, where each of the three riders is free to attack and go for victory if they feel strong. The main thing, the riders have said, is that they don’t chase each other down. But whilst this may feel like an egalitarian approach, it’s not. It’s not a freedom Kuss has been granted in the last two Grand Tours he helped win for Jumbo-Visma, but with him in the lead, the situation is different.

The hierarchy is becoming clear: Vingegaard and Roglič deserve the freedom to go for the win, whilst any help for Kuss - who was better than almost everyone else on the hardest climb of this race - would be a gift, and there are no gifts.

For the cycling world watching on, it was hard to see what Kuss would have to be happy about, having to sprint to the line just to stay in his red jersey, but the American maintained his cool and balanced perspective at the finish.

“I am really happy,” he said. “When I crossed the finish line, I thought I had lost the jersey. I did the best I could on the climb, when I heard I still had the jersey, I was a bit surprised.

“Strange feelings today, but not in a bad way. Another day with my two strong teammates, my friends as well. I think we had a nice time, or as good of a time as you can racing up the Angliru.”

The admission of strange feelings is as close as anyone in the team has got to admitting the complexity of the situation in the team. Speaking exclusively to GCN after the stage, team manager Richard Plugge was equally focused on the positives.

“Sepp is still in red, and Primož won the stage,” was the refrain Plugge repeated, a hard-to-argue-with summation of, on paper, a very successful day for Jumbo-Visma.

It’s true that based on the results, Jumbo-Visma have little to complain about and much to celebrate, but what happened today on the Angliru will be remembered in cycling. A red jersey left behind by his teammates, fighting through the mist to hold onto a lead that didn’t even need to be in jeopardy. The team put on a united front, but the rest of this race will be a test of how far the ‘no gifts’ ethos can really be pushed.

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