{"id":900082,"date":"2026-09-18T05:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900082\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T05:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:50:15","slug":"celebrating-sepp-kuss-visma-lease-a-bikes-dying-breed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900082\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Sepp Kuss: Visma | Lease a Bike’s ‘dying breed’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sepp Kuss<\/a> finished 5th at the 2026 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a> on Sunday. It was an impressive feat, given that the 32-year-old American completed all three Grand Tours in a single season for the second time in his career. The last time someone did that? Kuss himself, in 2023, the year he won the red jersey. Why does he seems to be only rider in the pro peloton who wants to ride all three in a year?<\/p>\n

In 2026, Kuss\u2019s Grand Tour story reads like the tale of a cyclist from a different era. In May, he won the queen stage of the Giro d\u2019Italia in the Dolomites from a breakaway\u2014the stage victory that was still missing from his palmares. \u201cI\u2019m away from home for many months,\u201d Kuss said afterward. \u201cPerformances like this require enormous sacrifices.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Tour de France\u2014after Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a>\u2019s team leader Jonas Vingegaard had dropped out\u2014he battled twice for the win on Alpe d\u2019Huez: in Stage 19, he finished fourth; a day later, he crashed twice on the descent<\/a>, just as victory was almost within his grasp. He ultimately finished third. After the Tour, Kuss immediately stated that he was also eager to ride the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

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

\"sepp-kuss-2\"\/<\/p>\n

Kuss won a stage in the Giro d’Italia, the one Grand Tour that was still missing from his palmar\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Kuss is a dying breed in cycling<\/p>\n

While there have been more riders in recent years who have completed all three Grand Tours in a single season, Kuss certainly belongs to a dying breed. In cycling history, only 36 riders have finished all three Grand Tours in a single year. In 2023, the last time Kuss did so, he even became only the second rider ever to win a Grand Tour in the same year he completed all three.<\/p>\n

He joined Gastone Nencini in a select group of two, as Nencini had done the same in 1957. In a sport where race days are becoming fewer and training days and high-altitude training camps are on the rise, Kuss continues to focus primarily on racing.<\/p>\n

The strain of nine weeks of racing seems to have little effect on the climber. \u201cI\u2019ve never really known it any other way, because I\u2019ve done it before and know how my body reacts,\u201d he told Cyclingnews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

\"sepp-kuss\"\/<\/p>\n

Kuss in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/p>\n

Kuss wins the Vuelta in 2023 and finishes fifth in 2026 after the Giro and the TourPerhaps the most striking aspect of his 2023 and 2026 Grand Tour seasons is that Kuss may have reached his peak form in the Vuelta. A fifth-place finish in the overall standings, following a fantastic move by Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> on Stage 20, proved once again that it\u2019s still possible: race, race, race.<\/p>\n

“Physically, it’s a good combination, a good formula for me,” said the protagonist himself, who will be ready for a few weeks off the bike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sepp Kuss finished 5th at the 2026 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a on Sunday. It was an impressive feat, given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,15223,82,10761,301174],"class_list":["post-900082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sepp-kuss","tag-sports","tag-visma-lease-a-bike","tag-vuelta-a-espana-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900082","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=900082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}