Sepp Kuss couldn't be more different to Jumbo-Visma's other two Grand Tour winners this year. While it was delightful to see a smiling, stress-free Primož Roglič liberated from Tour de France pressures and riding to the Giro d'Italia victory (even if it meant heartbreak for Geraint Thomas) and impressive to watch Jonas Vingegaard's almost clinical execution of his Tour de France defence, Kuss' win was entirely unexpected, against the odds (and his aforementioned teammates), and handled with a breezy, cheerful air that endears him to fans everywhere, making him the people's champion at the Vuelta a España.
Kuss was supposed to be a 'super-domestique' for Roglič and Vingegaard but instead ended up on top in a sort of 'oops, I did it, sorry' moment on stage 8. He endured competition from outside and within his own team, but rode the time trial of his life and fought brilliantly on the Angliru to finally earn his team's trust to be the protected leader.
His win is one for everyone who works hard, is always dependable, and slaves outside of the spotlight while the bosses take all the credit.
Sepp Kuss winning the Vuelta has the feeling of a surprise birthday party thrown by all your besties, during which you find a long-lost Powerball ticket under the sofa cushion that turns out to be a jackpot winner at the same time you are reunited with the dog who went missing three years ago and everyone's crying tears of joy.
It's a sharp contrast to the feelings last time an American won the Spanish Grand Tour. Chris Horner was 41 when he won the Vuelta, and rather than inspire hope, Horner couldn't even get a job after that flawless ride. Fans whose emotional wounds were still fresh from Lance Armstrong's doping confession nine months earlier were unimpressed by his self-released biological passport data and unconvinced when Horner insisted he 'wasn't rider 15' in the Armstrong USADA case.
There has been a lot of baggage attached to American cycling since then, burdens so heavy to bear that riders like Taylor Phinney and Tejay van Garderen opted out of shouldering them and left the sport prematurely.
Jumbo-Visma smashing everyone in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta in one year and sweeping the podium in Spain is unprecedented, and there will undoubtedly be questions to answer and suspicions to address.
But Kuss demonstrated his talents at a young age, rose steadily through the ranks, was already considered one of the best climbers in the business, and practically won the Vuelta - his third Grand Tour of the season - by accident.
The victory makes Kuss the first rider in history to be a part of a winning team in all three Grand Tours in one season and only the second rider after Gastone Nencini to race all three and win one. Nencini was fifth in the Tour and ninth in the Vuelta and won the Giro d'Italia in 1957.
Everyone who saw the 2018 Tour of Utah knew that Sepp Kuss had the potential to be a Grand Tour contender, but once he went off to Andorra and devoted himself to life as a super-domestique, he's flown mostly under the radar here.
All that changed on August 31 when Kuss won the stage to the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre and came within seconds of taking the lead. Two days later, the rider from Durango donned the red jersey, and all the #GCKuss memes that had previously been jokes became serious.
He ignited the passion of American fans across social media as they rallied behind him in his intra-team rivalry.
The hashtag - started by a Kuss parody account in 2022 - was picked up by Jumbo-Visma and made into a T-shirt, showing that maybe the team was really paying attention to public opinion in definitively putting their weight behind Kuss after Roglič and Vingegaard failed to take the jersey from him on the stage to the Angliru.
The drama surrounding Jumbo-Visma's questionable tactics aside, what transpired in the last 13 stages only helped build Kuss' appeal and highlight the qualities that distinguish him from the country's previous stars.
It was clear from the time he took to high-five the fans en route to the finish line on stage 6 and the outrageous volume of cava he chugged on the podium after his stage win in Andorra that he thought he'd be back in the proverbial mines the next day.
But then Lenny Martinez lost contact on the stage, finishing on the 'Wall of Catí', and #GCKuss began to take off.
When Vingegaard jumped away on the Tourmalet, he could be forgiven for wanting to move up in the overall, Roglič attacking on the Angliru not as much. But all the while, Kuss is either a brilliant actor or was beaming with a genuine smile after each stage.
The internet erupted after the stage with outrage and even his competitors said they'd like Kuss to win after Vingegaard closed to within eight seconds.
The fans generated the drama for him, lashing out to Jumbo-Visma and then, after the team backed Kuss, taking partial credit for the shift in strategy. Maybe if Netflix had been behind the scenes at the Vuelta, they'd have tried to drum up the intra-team rivalry, but Kuss wasn't playing into it. He smiled through it all.
Maybe, just maybe, the coast is clear enough now for the US to have another Grand Tour rider to believe in.
Such a rider would have to possess a unique combination of qualities to win the hearts of cycling fans around the world, and Kuss has all of them - a refreshing contrast with America's previous outsized Grand Tour personality - coarse, brash, vindictive, controlling, and deceitful.
Before winning the Vuelta, the 27-year-old Kuss already showed the qualities of a relatable personality: he speaks good Spanish to the delight of the local media, he's invariably upbeat and positive, he seems to genuinely enjoy his role as a super-domestique, is unwaveringly loyal and the unbridled joy he shows is infectious.
Kuss definitely had ambition and, while respectful to his teammates and never critical, expressed his desire to have his shot - a phrase that had our Editor singing that tune from the musical Hamilton:
I'm past patiently waitin'
I'm passionately smashin' every expectation
Every action's an act of creation
I'm laughin' in the face of casualties and sorrow
For the first time, I'm thinkin' past tomorrow
And I am not throwing away my shot
If we can have Labor Day to honour the contributions of hard working laborers, it should be forever in the month of SEPPtember because this victory is for the people.
