Visma-Lease a Bike have had some record-breaking success in this year's Vuelta a España, taking seven stages so far and with an eighth possibly to come on Sunday, but after Saturday's crunch day in the mountains, it was their GC contender Sepp Kuss who had the biggest smile of the team.
An attack from distance on the third-to-last massive climb in the Sierra Nevada mountain range paid off big time for the US racer, who finished eighth on the stage and more than two minutes clear of the next GC rider to make it home, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM).
As a result, Kuss was the rider who made by far the most important GC gains on the toughest day of the 2026 Vuelta, moving up from 11th to fifth overall.
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Seventh in the Spanish Grand Tour in 2025, should the Visma-Lease a Bike finish in fifth on Sunday, it'll be his best GC finish since he won the race outright back in 2023.
Yet for all Kuss logical delight on a personal level at making such a big fightback on the last day possible, and in his third Grand Tour of 2026, too, the rider from Colorado had fulsome praise for how his teammates had made it possible for him to climb so high in the overall on such a difficult stage.
Teammates Jorgen Nordhagen and Wout van Aert played a crucial role in leading Kuss through the final part of the stage, but others like Matthew Brennan and Bruno Armirail had been there working for him on the earlier climbs as well. All in all, as Kuss told reporters at the finish before heading back down to Granada, it had been a spectacularly successful show of strength from the Visma-Lease a Bike collective.
"Hats off to the team. We had a plan, and yeah it was just like everything the stars aligning in every moment of the race, every single guy on the team had a part in it," Kuss said on Eurosport afterwards.
"That's how we race as a team, that's our identity, I guess, and it was just amazing being part of it. I had goosebumps the whole day, and it was just fun to go out and race.
"Most of this race I've had a bitter feeling, not being able to race like I wanted, or everything plays out in a way different from what you expect.
"But today I really enjoyed it. It was like a playground out there with all these steep climbs, so I'm just happy to be part of the team effort."
Five minutes clear of the red jersey group at one point as the final climb approached, it looked as if Kuss might even be able to get a grip on a podium placing. He weakened slightly on the last, formidable ascent to Collado del Alguacil, but even though that happened, it still was a remarkable performance by himself and his squad all round.
"From the days before, we knew that I wouldn't be able to just jump in the early break, so the plan was to go for the stage win," Kuss said.
"But you can never control the distance the break has, so already before the first ascent of El Purche it was a really big gap.
"But I had nothing to lose, so I knew I had a bunch of strong teammates ahead, so I just went all in on the first time, and the guys were amazing. It never felt like I was alone."
There is one last opportunity for Visma-Lease a Bike to take a stage win on the streets of Granada on Sunday, and most like either Van Aert - whose hold on the points classification is already definitive - or Brennan will be the main candidates. But after Kuss' bounce-back on GC, for Visma, the last weekend of the 2026 Vuelta has already seen one major objective fulfilled.
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