Sepp Kuss: In pursuit of weightlessness

For Sepp Kuss, the eternal question seems to finally have an answer. Maybe he doesn't have to be a team leader. Maybe he doesn't have to be a Grand Tour contender. Maybe he can just be what he is, and be happy with that. 

For a good three years now, off-season interviews with Kuss have centred around that same point of inquisition. His performances as a mountain domestique for Jumbo-Visma have commanded respect and sometimes awe, but have always been followed by demands to know when he's going to do it all for himself. 

"It's a normal question," he says as this one starts out in familiar fashion. "From the outside, you see I'm with the best guys on a lot of days, you extrapolate that, and you think 'why can't he be in more of a leadership position?'

"But it's not that simple," he adds. 

The question now has a different answer. Even if Kuss previously pleaded patience, there never seemed to be any real deviation from the idea that leadership was the logical next step in his career, but that's not the case anymore.

"We have kind of decided that how I am is just perfect for what I need to do, and what I enjoy," he says.

By 'we', he means himself and his Jumbo-Visma team, notably the sporting director Merijn Zeeman, who personally phoned Kuss when he was struggling for form in the spring. 

"He called me and said 'you know what, you don't need to be a GC rider, you don't need to be someone who's doing everything that Primož [Roglič] and Jonas [Vingegaard] are doing, because it's not you. 

"You're one of the best climbers - just focus on that. Just keep things simple, rather than trying to find every bit of improvement and creating more noise."

The call came as something of a relief. Kuss, like everyone else, had assumed he needed to develop into a different rider.

"It was something I always felt, in a way. It's just the nature of being a cyclist, you always want the next best thing. You think 'I'm progressing, OK now I want to be a GC rider for the Grand Tours, OK you need to have your TT...' 

"That's what you're expected to do in a way, but it's not really... it's not for everyone. And there comes a point where you'll just be beating your head against a wall, only making yourself worse because you're not progressing the way you expected. For a lot of people it works, but it's not the same for everyone."

What clinched things in Kuss' own head was time trialling - the pure climber's natural enemy. In theory, if Kuss could improve against the clock, he could defend himself in the time trials, attack in the mountains, and he'd have the basis of a general classification bid. 

But while time trialling seemed to come so naturally to the likes of Vingegaard and Roglič, without blunting their climbing edge, for Kuss it simply didn't come at all. In fact, it was like the more effort he put into it, the worse he got. 

"I think I do my best time trials when I don't train on my TT bike. If you think about something too much, you overthink it, and with the TTs it became more of an obligation or a pressure. Physically it didn't take too much away from me but mentally it added too much," he says.

"You have to know your limits, and focus a bit more on what you're good at and enjoy. If you add so much to your plate, then so many different sets of expectations, it just overcomplicates things, and I don't need so much complication. I just need to enjoy riding my bike, be able to go off for seven or eight hours in the mountains, alone, enjoying the adventure. 

"I appreciate the data-driven side of cycling but in the end I train more for the spirit of it, the feelings I get. If I do two or three hours extra and it feels good and it allows me to see more of the world and have fun, then in the end it's better for me. And then I know I'll be good in the race."

As Kuss talks about all this, it becomes apparent that he might be rather more process driven than outcome driven. When he talks about the Tour de France, the highlight of his season, there's even a slight sense of emptiness. 

This year, Jumbo-Visma won the Tour for the first time, Jonas Vingegaard outgunning Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) in spectacular fashion to avenge the devastating last-gasp defeat the Slovenian had inflicted on Roglič in 2020. Kuss was there for the low, and again played a key role in the high. 

"The year it happened and it was very special but at the end of the day everyone packs their bags, goes home, and is already thinking about the next race," he says. 

"I don't want to take away how special it was - it was very special - but as athletes everything is so focused on the next thing, and I was already thinking about the Vuelta. To me, it felt like another race, almost. I tried to remind myself to enjoy it and everything, but that's the strange thing about cycling - you can win the biggest race in the world but people move on."

Moving on to 2023, Kuss' season will follow a familiar structure, combining the Tour de France and Vuelta a España once more. He no longer feels the pressure to start stepping out of Roglič's shadow but nor is he shutting the door entirely. 

"If you just settle, and think 'I'm just a worker', then you become a bit complacent," he argues. "I always try and set my sights in that direction and you never know what might happen, when you might have a breakthrough moment or that special race where it all comes together."

The point is that Kuss isn't going to force it. 

He acknowledges that he's prone to his 'bad days', but insists: "I'd prefer to have one really bad day and one day that's incredible, rather than being steady every day but not being able to go above that."

And Kuss does make those days sound incredible. 

"You have this weightlessness, I guess," he says of his best moments in both training and racing. "You find your flow and inner peace, you're riding in some beautiful place in the mountains just enjoying the moment. Then you don't feel the suffering quite as much."

What more could you want?