After watching the recent Visma insider video, I have real respect for how that team is ran and the respect amongst the teammates. The only thing that was disappointing about this race is not seeing MMVC (my man Victor Campenaerts) make a showing in some way in the last bits of the race. 😁
Sepp is a prime example of a true teammate. What a selfless act of pure sacrifice Sepp did for Wout today. If not for Sepps sacrifice, Wout probably wouldn't have taken the stage win. And Wouts praise for Sepp was pure class. To me, this stage will go down as probably one of the best stages in Sepps career as a domestique. I think Sepp thought Wout jumped on his attack Chris.
Roglic pulls off and looks at Sepp Kuss in yellow and remembers the days when good ole seppy would have pulled him doing the work of 2 or 3 of his Bora teammates
Nice summary of a pretty unusual stage. Sepp Kuss showed he was the ultimate teammate. I’m glad Wout was able to finish off the effort. It’s good to see him having success after all his problems.
I am so glad that you are making this video about GC Sepp Kuss 😉 he really deserves all the accolades and praise that Wout, you and others are showing him after today’s stage. I feel like he didn’t get celebrated enough during the team Jumbo controversy at the 2023 Vuelta.
You saw both teammates pull amazing efforts today in concert and you could certainly see the Wout appreciation in that grasp around Sepp. Thanks Lads for the Glory!
Sepp Kuss a prince of a teammate in an world of self centered riders. An enormous amount of knucklehead moves by many riders I attribute to selfishly seeking gory for themselves.
Sepp did the best thing for himself with such a ride. It is not clear that the team is 100% behind him for GC and he still has to win hearts and minds as they go into the last weeks. This ride was remarkable, memorable and hopefully a savings deposit that he can cash out later. RBH is all over the shop so Sepp does stand a chance if Visma focuses on him. Chapeau to he and Wout.
If Bora burnt their team on a cat 2 climb, it means they couldn't bring the gap down on Ben yesterday. Bora is not Visma or UAE. Roglic needs to work a lot harder to win this year, Vuelta.
I'm in the ChesterField listening to the great Chris Horner analysis. I didn't think you would call BORA H. knuckleheads one more time 🤣, but they deserve it. It doesn't look like they will help Primoz get the red jersey back.
Kuss is a Great teammate but without Vlasov, Sivakov won this stage + Lipowitz was near to caught the group of Vlasov, where also Tiberi stayed but with that big pull of the crazy Vlasov Lipowitz ( Vlasov's teammate ) cannot close and lost the White Jersey for few seconds and Tiberi takes the White. What a knucklehead move from Vlasov
I think Bora simply wants to prevent O'Connor from getting any rest so that the chances of him cracking on one of the weekend stages are a bit higher - but they did try to drop him too (he did a massive effort in the breakaway, what if he is too tired), plus get the bonus seconds and sort of dropped themselves in the process which looked a bit dumb. By the way Vacek is pronounced with the Czech "c",a bit like ts is pronounced ad the end of "Streets". But I don't mind as long as he rides well enough to get his name pronounced on podcasts :-). Eurosport struggles too :-).
I believe that domestique Kuss is a much better role for Sepp than GC Kuss. He is a consummate teammate and does much better when that stress of leadership role isn’t on him.
He's proven he's the ultimate domestique but he does have a *beast* mode :-) I think if he works on his ITT skills he could be a serious GC contender in the other tours. Roglic and Tadej (and increasingly Jonas) are able to punch to steal KOMs and wins. It's and essential skill as well (to be impolite).
Agree 100%. I think he is uncomfortable in the GC role, which is fair because only since last years Vuelta has he ever been looked at as GC Kuss. He is much more comfortable as the super domestique
Chris, can you talk a little about the strategy for the different riders, like OConnor, Roglic, and Almeida, given the big lead OConnor has? That lead is not insurmountable, but at the same time I'm afraid if OConnor tries sticking with Roglic all the time he might risk blowing himself up and losing it all in one stage.
Picking up from my comment yesterday: if Roglič was willing to sweat blood for the sake of 6 seconds today, why didn't he do the same yesterday for 30 seconds? I mean, O'Connor is an awesome dude, but he'd been in the wind for 50km and Roglič had been sheltered.
Not mention it was hot again and red bull ride hard today for six seconds and Decathlon appeared to have a relatively easy day unbelievable . Very interesting listening to some of the interviews with the riders pre todays stage .
If Bora can't cope with a second category climb and they are all getting dropped, then it's going to be a bloodbath on Sunday, plus it's predicted to be 36 Celsius. There's no team dominating the race and Sunday looks even more interesting now
Agreed, RBH is a bunch of knuckleheads again, two days in a row. It is one of the few constants in the universe. RBH lead out train for Wout.🙄 Nice ride by Sepp for Wout.
Chris you should be DS and I live in Perth same as Ben and climbs like that are what we have here. Ben Jai Sam Luke all grew up here and there doing so well. So proud. Hank as well. Hanks family home was at one of the worst hills in Perth but there was a phone box at the bottom and Hank or his brother would ring mum, mum would drive down and tow them up the hill.
-Bora is operating at beyond knucklehead, it's operation in idiotic territory. Vlasov pulling WVA is stupid. -Sepp has no chance at GC. Might as well help WVA get some stage wins.
It's not stupid the other gc teams are hunting stage victories . UAE too many Indians, bh not have manpower to ride at the front, TLAB same stage victories. Kuss will hel wva but let's see if wva will help sk. He didn't on stage 5
@@michaelglidewell1524 with big mountains still to come, Vlas shouldnt worry about Sivakov's time as Sivakov has zero GC ambition in this race. Vlas should have pulled hard when Ben was breaking away
@WanderingSword all the main gc teams should have. They were too tethered to their race radios and couldn't or wouldn't adapt to the race situation. They all played chicken- and lost!
Chris, I've only disagreed with you a hand full of times over the years, and today was one of them.....as if you care about my opinion!!!! Kuss attacking was a GREAT move. There were only 2 options for the peloton: 1) let Kuss go, or 2) Chase kuss and control the group. #2 happened, giving wva a breather before the Sprint finish. Voila.
Sepp didn't complain when Vin and Primoz kept attacking him in last year's Vuelta. He is the super domestique that every team wishes they had. Pure class.
Visma’s season has been lost to crashes and injuries. They’re already down a key rider for this Vuelta, and Sepp even had COVID right before the TdF. They’re just trying to salvage whatever they can.
After listening to pre-race interviews, I would ssy there were similarities to Floyd's stage 17 tactic. Similar course layout. Some were saying it was hard chasing the break. They were trying. That's what was said by some riders in thier interviews.
Ask Peter Sagan how many TdF stages he would have won if he’s teammate didn’t attack near the finish and leave him alone. Last thing you want to do is hope that someone chases. 🤔🦋
A stage now for his team is worth taking time loss for the GC this weekend for Sepp. Visma doesn't have the support for Sepp to win, especially with van Barle out injured and Cian not showing much. So why not help Wout win?
Hi Chris, don't know how much effort it would take you, but do you think its possible to create playlists for the coverages you do per tg? Like a vuelta or tdf 24 playlist so we have something to watch in the offseason?
It does seem that Paxti Villa is still using tactics from the early 90's it would suck for Primoz to have total leadership of a broken tactical team, and be full fitness not crash and still lose to his DS working against him.🙏🏻🤞🏻
While Sepp worked for Wout to win today, last year Primoz and Jonas attacked him. The team spirit of Sepp is way more different than that of Primoz and Jonas.
Jonas did not attack Sepp, the truth is Primoz attacked Sepp and if not chased down by Jonas, I’m my opinion would have taken the win of the stage that day and the Red Jersey off Sepp, but Jonas in what initially looked like an attack on Sepp in reality chased Primoz down. Primoz is a race horse and old school in that he always races to win and with some justification believed he had been promised the team leadership in last year’s Vuelta in exchange for not getting leadership of last years TDF the one Grand Tour he has never won. So he started the 23 Vuelta thinking he was TJV leader with Jonas and Sepp as super - domestiques but when Sepp by a combination of circumstances won a mountain stage in week two (in the style of Ben O’Connor in a long range solo attack) by a huge margin giving him the Red Jersey by several minutes then it appears the team management (the DS and even apparently by the team Principal) decided that Sepp was to be given a chance to win a GT and so the others must support him even though they both are better GT riders. We now know that Primoz was unhappy feeling that he was owed the overall win for aiding Jonas in the TDF plus justifiably arguing that there are no gifts in WT racing and he was a better climber. We know this because Primoz bluntly said so in am interview. It took an intervention by General Manager Richard Plugge who flew in to a special team meeting on the second rest day to get the grudging acceptance of Primoz and instructively it was Jonas who fronted up in a rest day interview to explain that the team riders were 100% behind Sepp. In no way did Jonas ever not support Sepp. As to Primoz he pasted on a smile but it’s clear that is when he decided to seek another team. For his career that’s a good thing because he really wants to win the TDF and he would never have been team leader for VSL over Jonas.
Any idea why Pogacar did not run the Vuelta ? He could have easily won it and do the 3 grand tours in the same year for the first time in history and become the undisputed GOAT...
Follow up question on the top 5. I have six riders legitimately fighting for top five. Which do you have dropped? Pogacar Vingegaard Remco Roglic MVP WVA
I have six on the first page. MVDP is #6. I only needed to mention five in the video because Wout is the fifth and officially that’s top five but mVDP is also on the 1st page. 👊🦋
Now he has an excuse if he got dropped. He sacrificed himself for his team mate. With O’Connor at 6 minutes, yeah, I don’t see how he can claw that back. At least WVA has a chance to win green. Also V-LAB should send a champagne to Bora, Vlasov practically took over from Kuss and lead out WVA to the win.
If the main goal of Visma is finishing on the podium, what Kuss is doing here is being an absolute knucklehead. Rule nr 1 according to Chris is staying with your leader. Not your leader working for other riders, thus wasting energy that you could use later in the race.
Sep Kuss is a super rider, too soon to say he's out of this year's vuelta. Is his first time going as GC rider. Worst case scenario, he'll help and steal some stages.
This year no. Who would be able to help sepp win from Visma if Sepp was even to get the red jersey. All of Visma got dropped today except sepp and Wout. But Bora didn’t look much better either. So there’s bond to be some more drama coming at this Vuelta. 😬🦋🔥
Seemed like Wout had 2 team mates both kuss and Vlasov. Why would Vlasov be leading out like this? Sprinters take bonus seconds on the line, and Siva who cares taking 10s. Looking like Vlas in a good form but using him up before the job is really wasteful and Rogla has a lot of defence to do in the mountains against Decathlon that may surprise us in the mountains… knuckles all over this.
He didn't lead out Wout. Wout benefited tho.Vlasov was riding for his own GC position. Sivakov is a second behind him. Winning meant Sivakov got 10 secs on him. He did what needed to be done 🤷🏾♀️
I had occasionally thought you were too apt to indulge in the knucklehead moniker where I thought there were probably extenuations but this time I'm at a loss. wth is Bora doing.
