{"id":818465,"date":"2026-07-22T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818465\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T11:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:23:10","slug":"kuss-dismisses-rumors-about-vingegaards-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818465\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuss dismisses rumors about Vingegaard’s retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> came to the Tour de France to win the yellow jersey with Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>. After his victory in the Giro d’Italia, he seemed completely ready, but things went wrong on the fifteenth stage<\/a>. His crash means the Dutch team must continue without its leader. How does the Dane view his future in cycling?<\/p>\n

For two years in a row, Jonas Vingegaard was the world\u2019s most dominant general classification rider, with two Tour victories in 2022 and 2023. But for two years in a row, he was also soundly defeated by Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian won his third and fourth Tour de France titles in 2024 and 2025. This year, however, Vingegaard arrived in France with a new training regimen and renewed vigor.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t pay off much for him in the first two weeks, but the grueling third week was supposed to bring him the yellow jersey. Visma | Lease a Bike began their campaign in stage fifteen, but that\u2019s exactly where things went wrong. With 22 kilometers to go, Vingegaard took a hard fall. He broke his collarbone in the crash<\/a>, forcing the Dane to withdraw from the Tour de France while sitting in second place in the general classification.For him, Visma | Lease a Bike, and lead-out man Sepp Kuss<\/a>, it was a blow. \u201cIt\u2019s disappointing, because our part of the race was only going to start on that stage,\u201d the American told Cyclism\u2019Actu<\/a> after his time trial on Stage 16. \u201cIt happened right before the final climb. We\u2019re all thinking about how it could have been. But we still have a good group, and we\u2019ve made the adjustment. We miss Jonas, but we\u2019re looking ahead to the coming days\u2014it\u2019s going to be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"sepp-kuss-paul-seixas\"\/Kuss: “Jonas will return next year”<\/p>\n

So, a new Tour is beginning for Visma | Lease a Bike. Not for Vingegaard, though: he\u2019ll have to watch from home. Twitter was abuzz with speculation\u2014would he be able to handle such a major disappointment again? Some spoke of an early retirement for the Dane, but Kuss is very clear about how his team leader is doing.<\/p>\n

“You get used to disappointments; it’s part of the sport,” he explains. “Jonas was disappointed, of course, but he was in good spirits. He knows it could be worse; he\u2019s had worse crashes. He\u2019ll be back next year, and he\u2019s already looking forward to it. It\u2019s all about that mental shift\u2014something you get used to as a cyclist. As a rider, you experience more disappointments than victories.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kuss himself, this opens up new opportunities. He won a stage in the Tour in 2021, but will now have more freedom to go on the attack. \u201cI hope to be in the breakaway during the tougher mountain stages. I\u2019ll try to enjoy those moments at the front of the Tour\u2014those moments are special in their own right. As for Stages 19 and 20: it depends on what UAE decides to do. We\u2019ll try something every day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visma | Lease a Bike came to the Tour de France to win the yellow jersey with Jonas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,5900,15223,82,262636,10761],"class_list":["post-818465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-sepp-kuss","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}