For the last three weeks, Durango’s Sepp Kuss has been riding as a selfless teammate in the Giro d’Italia, supporting Visma-Lease a Bike team leader and race favorite, Jonas Vingegaard, but on Friday, Kuss achieved something only one other American has done.
The 31-year-old Durango super-domestique showed his climbing prowess by winning the mountainous Stage 19 of the Giro. It’s Kuss’ first Giro stage win of his career, and Kuss joined Tyler Farrar as the only Americans to win stages in all three Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España). Friday’s victory was the first Grand Tour stage win for Kuss since his 2023 Vuelta a España General Classification victory.
“I still can’t believe I won this stage,” Kuss said. “It’s something I’ve dreamed about for a long time, but I also knew it would be difficult to achieve. Every year the level gets higher, so I knew I wouldn’t have many chances left to win a stage in the Giro. Today, everything finally came together. This is special.”
Stage 19 was a brutal, 151-kilometer trek from Feltre, Italy, through the Dolomites with six categorized climbs, finishing at Piani di Pezzè, Alleghe, Italy.
Kuss won the stage in four hours, 28 minutes and 33 seconds, 13 seconds ahead of Derek Gee-West in second. Vingegaard finished fifth, 39 seconds behind Kuss.
One of the reasons Stage 19 was special for Kuss was that he was told before the stage by the team that he could join the breakaway, which he did, joining a breakaway that had as many as 26 riders early in the stage. Vingegaard stayed back in the peloton with the other Visma riders.
As the riders continued to climb through the stage’s 5,000 meters of elevation gain, the breakaway got smaller and smaller, but Kuss continued to hang in there as the sleeping mountain giant in a group of GC riders.
Kuss said after that he thought his hopes of stage victory were gone when Giulio Ciccone attacked on the top of the Passo Falzarego, the penultimate climb of the day, into the descent, putting 40 seconds on the breakaway group with about 20 kilometers to go.
Ciccone kept his lead over 40 seconds until about 4 km to go on the final climb as Kuss pushed the pace of the breakaway group. The Eagle of Durango then flew away from the breakaway toward Ciccone, rapidly closing the gap on the climb. Kuss said after that these challenging and physical days are the ones he looks forward to the most.
Kuss passed Ciccone with a stellar late attack with about 2.2 km left in the stage, and Ciccone had nothing left to respond. Kuss crossed the finish line at the top of the climb solo, raising his hands in victory to the adoring crowd.
It was an emotional finish for Kuss, with his mother, Sabina, at the finish line ready to greet him.
“I knew my mother was going to be standing 500 meters from the finish,” Kuss said post-race to the press. “A big shoutout to her and my family because I only really see them a few weeks every year. It’s hard to stay in contact with everybody that’s far away. It was really nice to have her there, and I’m always thinking of my family and friends that I don’t get to see so much. This was for them.”
Vingegaard leads the GC by 4:03 over Felix Gall with two stages remaining in the Giro. Kuss moved up to 13th in the Giro, up from 17th. Kuss is the highest American in the GC and is the third-highest Visma rider behind Vingegaard and Davide Piganzoli.
It’s not lost on Vingegaard how much Kuss means to Visma and his career, since Kuss has been a domestique for Vingegaard in all of the Danish star’s Grand Tour wins. Vingegaard said after the stage that he thinks Kuss’ Giro stage win completes the Durangoan’s career.
“Sepp's such an exceptional guy,” Vingegaard said in a CyclingNews article. “He always sacrifices himself and never asks for anything back. He's been there for all my Grand Tour wins, and I'm so happy he gets a chance to win and takes it. It's a dream come true.”
Next up is Saturday’s mountainous Stage 20, a 200 km ride. The Giro will finish with a flat stage in Rome on Sunday.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
