Roglic watered the Italian Filippo Ganna with the stage winner’s cava, which arrived after 20 minutes. Manuel Bruque (EFE)
Sepp Kuss is a world compressed into one kilometer that leads up to the Xorret de Catí. Wild road, rough asphalt, winding like the winding trunks of the Aleppo pines that offer no shade to anyone on a cloudy afternoon. The cyclist from Colorado doesn’t need it as he begins a planned team effort that leaves the stage to his teammate Primoz Roglic and rewards him with the leader’s red jersey.
The power of his jumbo is so great that he plays with everyone and not everyone laughs with them, so cheerfully; This is the courage of Kuss, who enjoys nature as he pedals and breathes heavily, and a task that his teammates in the top team set before him through the mountains and rocks of Alicante, through the endless and heavy Carrasqueta, Van, Baarle, Gesink, Kelderman, Tratnik and Attila Valter transformed into poetry, kilometer after kilometer after a hopeful escape for a minute; bleak, a few hours – like programmed robots obsessively looking at the motherboard that regulates their behavior. That is, the computer screen that counts their wattage, and they only seem human if they take off their glasses for a second every now and then and wipe the sweat from their foreheads that stings their eyes. And on the run, the soulless robots are not appreciated. The oldest of the breakaways, over 30 years old, the Portuguese Rui Costa, world champion 10 years ago, intelligent and wise in breakaway attempts, who explodes at the finish line, says: “How much jumbo exhibition, too much, what.” If If there is a lack of consideration, they do not allow leaks. I don’t understand why they want to win everything, that they don’t want to leave anything to others…”
Rui Costa doesn’t understand, or perhaps he understands too well, that Primoz Roglic, as strong as he feels, with so much joy that his legs respond to his whims, has not only decided at his start that he wants to win the stage (that he would like to add his eleventh victory in the five tours he has ridden and three that he has won, and every year he has won at least one), but like Antonio Tiberi, an Italian on the run, he had Fun He kills a cat with a shot in the streets of San Marino, has fun and much more, represents sadism and makes Remco Evenepoel suffer, the rival who motivates him the most and who takes the most pleasure in torturing him. Roll it up and crush it. The game of cat and mouse with which he had so much fun in the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro until the Belgian gave up in Rosa because of Covid, and which he repeats in Xorret de Catí, and thanks to which he is doing great Kiss.
The Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld expresses like no other what Kiss is, who also likes to win, to drink on the podium the cava that others waste on festive foam, and he admits that so much foam makes him a little drunk. “He is the velvet lever of the Jumbo to blow up the stages, the joker of Jonas Vingegaard and Roglic, he is not a stressed rooster, he does not want to suffer when he thinks about an overall classification, he is a fluttering swallow,” he writes The North American cyclist, who has barely completed more than a kilometer of climb and Lenny Martínez, courageous in the red jersey that he will lose, has already detached himself from his bike, climbs on the back of Remco Evenepoel, the proud Belgian, national jersey on the Back who is He insists on going first and walks away. Kuss achieves a minimum lead of 20 meters, no more and no less, which he controls and measures by looking back from time to time and watching Evenepoel, who is the target. And Roglic is waiting behind the exhausted Belgian. After his task has been completed, Kuss allows himself to be reached and, freed, calmly follows him. Evenepoel tenses up and doesn’t give in. Roglic patiently only gets out of the saddle in the last few meters. Accelerate hard and win. And laughs. “How many managers does Jumbo have? There are three of us, right? And maybe more, hahahaha…”
He laughs at the victory, at his team’s superiority, at his festivals, which, however, do not let the audience’s morale sink. Behind Kuss and four others who maintain the lead acquired in Javalambre are the top five of the Vuelta – Evenepoel, Roglic, Vingegaard, Mas and Ayuso – with a gap of 21 seconds. Everyone declares themselves happy. Evenepoel, who stays ahead despite so much effort. “I’m proud. I’m not feeling well physically and apart from the sprint they haven’t managed to overtake me. And they’re wasting a lot. The Vuelta has only been taking place for a week…” he says to the Slovenian to take away the joy of the year that came with it. “And I could have won the stage, but I thought another rider had already started and I didn’t challenge Roglic in the sprint…”
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