The Domestique Who Wouldn’t Fade

In professional cycling, the most valuable rider is often the one who disappears from the television coverage first. While the cameras follow the stars sprinting for the line or attacking on a mountain pass, the work that makes those moments possible is done hours earlier by riders whose names rarely make the headlines. For years, Sepp Kuss occupied exactly that space. He was the man at the front when no one wanted to be there, setting a pace that burned the legs off rivals while his team leader rode in the slipstream. Then, in the autumn of 2023, the invisible rider became impossible to ignore.
Kuss comes from Durango, Colorado, a mountain town better known for skiing than cycling. He grew up on skis, raced through high school and college, and only turned seriously to road racing once he was already a young adult. That late start is unusual for an elite professional, but it also explains something about the way he rides. There is no wasted motion in his style. On a climb, he looks like someone solving a math problem: calm, patient, and quietly efficient. Where other riders attack with explosive bursts, Kuss tends to grind opponents down with a steady, remorseless tempo.
That temperament made him the ideal support rider for one of the strongest Grand Tour teams of the era. By 2022, he had become the last man standing beside Jonas Vingegaard in the high mountains of the Tour de France. When the Danish rider needed water, food, or simply a steady wheel on a terrifying descent, Kuss was there. It is a job that demands physical strength, tactical intelligence, and a willingness to sacrifice personal ambition night after night. Kuss did it so well that many assumed his career would be defined entirely by what he gave to others.
The 2023 Vuelta a España changed that story.
Jumbo-Visma arrived at the race with three riders capable of winning the overall classification: two-time Tour de France champion Vingegaard, perennial contender Primož Roglič, and Kuss, the loyal lieutenant. The script seemed obvious. Kuss would work for the other two, protect them on the flat days, pull them up the climbs, and fade back when the real battle began. But bike races do not always follow scripts. Roglič crashed and lost time. Vingegaard, still recovering from the effort of winning the Tour, was not at his dominant best. Kuss, meanwhile, kept finishing with the favorites, day after day, without ever looking like he was forcing it.
When he pulled on the leader’s red jersey, it felt less like a coup and more like a quiet accumulation of small advantages. He did not win the race with a single spectacular attack. He won it by not making mistakes, by staying calm when the gradients reached their steepest, and by trusting that his team, which had spent the entire season using him, would now ride for him. In Madrid, he became the first American since Chris Horner, ten years earlier, to stand atop the podium of a Grand Tour.
What made the victory resonate beyond the results sheet was the way it happened. Cycling has always had a complicated relationship with its supporting actors. A domestique is expected to be selfless, yet fans and media rarely celebrate selflessness for long. Kuss’s win felt like a reminder that the people who make the sport function are also athletes with their own limits, ambitions, and pride. He was not a star pretending to be humble; he was a genuinely quiet rider who happened to be the strongest man in the race.
There is also a lesson in how he got there. Modern professional cycling rewards early specialization, expensive youth programs, and riders who move to Europe as teenagers. Kuss took a different route. He developed as a ski racer, went to university, and gradually found that his endurance translated to the bike. His path suggests that talent does not always announce itself immediately and that the best preparation for one sport can sometimes come from another.
Since the Vuelta, expectations have shifted. Kuss is no longer just the helpful American in the background. Teams now mark him in the mountains. Commentators discuss him as a potential Grand Tour contender in his own right. Whether he wants that role, and whether his temperament suits the constant pressure of leadership, remains to be seen. He may return to being the world’s most valued teammate, or he may build on what he proved in Spain. Either way, his place in the sport has changed.
Sepp Kuss did not win the 2023 Vuelta by becoming someone else. He won it by being exactly what he had always been: steady, tough, and willing to do the hard work long before anyone was watching.