Sepp Kuss interview: The best male American cyclist of his generation on being 'the mailman who always delivers'
The path to success in professional cycling might seem well-worn and obvious.
Join a team young, get to the top of the hierarchy, become team leader, see bike race, try to win bike race.
But it is not the only way. Visma-Lease a Bike climber Sepp Kuss has become the best male American cyclist of his generation after joining the sport late and acting as an invaluable right-hand man to his captains.
When Kuss seized his opportunity and inverted that arrangement by winning the 2023 Vuelta a España ahead of team-mates Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglic, his performance raised the potential of a shift in status. Was this the start of regular stage races as a frontman?
The subsequent uptick in pressure and media questions played on Kuss’s mind. “When you have more attention and expectation on you, then sometimes you do more thinking about what other people would think rather than what you want to do or what you really are,” Kuss tells The Athletic during Visma-Lease a Bike’s media day in mid-January.
“I’m not saying that was just the case for me — that happens to everybody, it’s normal when you have a big achievement.
“But it was different. It strayed a lot from who I was as a cyclist or a bike racer. Just taking a step back and making things simpler was better for me.”
Since that high watermark, Kuss has principally returned to his regular role as “the mailman who always delivers”, in the words of his team managing director Richard Plugge.
In his career, he has won two stages at the Vuelta and one at the Tour de France while assisting Roglič and Vingegaard for all eight of their Grand Tour victories on the team. He is often the last helper standing on hors-catégorie climbs, burning off rivals and their workers by setting a fierce pace.
Being a super-domestique requires a different process and frame of mind than leadership. “Because even on the most decisive days, you know you need to be at your best, but you don’t need to win. Even if you have a bit of a lesser day, you can still do your job,” Kuss explains.
“But if you’re a leader on a lesser day, that could mean 20 seconds, a minute (lost). And that’s harder to live with and to pick yourself up and go on to the next day.”
“It’s more comfortable and, in terms of my mental sustainability, it’s a better place to be in. If you’re a GC rider in the Tour, then everything is stress, everything is pressure,” he says.
Kuss’ overall win at the 2023 Vuelta sealed a Grand Tour grand slam for his team that year (Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images)
Kuss can handle such demands as he showed in a Grand Tour victory set in motion by winning stage six of the 2023 Vuelta from a breakaway, finishing almost three minutes ahead of the other contenders.
“I was in a situation where all of a sudden I was leading the race and then once I was there, I said, ‘Well, there’s no way I’m gonna lose, I can’t lose this. It’s not an option’.”
“I felt confident in myself and I knew that I was riding well, so in my mind, I didn’t feel any weakness per se. But yes, that confidence was brought on by me being in that position and it’s not so easy to all of a sudden put a leader’s jersey on your shoulders and have two team-mates behind you and say ‘OK, if I lose it, then at least we’ll still win as a team’.”
Would Kuss like the opportunity to lead in a Grand Tour again? “It’s not that I need or I’m looking for the opportunity. I think if it’s meant to be, the opportunity will arise,” he says.
“I don’t feel, and never have felt, the need to show up on day one being the guy that everyone is behind. Because it’s not necessary for me to approach it that way.”
At least we know which hashtag will be trending on social media if he moves to the top of the GC standings again.
Since joining Team LottoNL-Jumbo as a raw neo-pro in 2018, Kuss has seen the Dutch squad transform, going from the bottom half of the WorldTour rankings to its summit within four years.
It has proven difficult to stay there. With Tadej Pogačar’s all-round dominance and UAE Team Emirates-XRG showing WorldTour stage race versatility, winning with João Almeida, Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez, Visma-Lease a Bike have dropped behind them in the pecking order.
Nevertheless, their own level of performance has not fallen off a cliff. Courtesy of Simon Yates and Vingegaard, the squad won two of the sport’s three Grand Tours in 2025, and the Dane finished runner-up to Pogačar at the Tour de France.
Yates’ surprise January retirement came as a blow to the team. Given Kuss’ self-knowledge and preferred role, it “does not change much in terms of new opportunities opening up” for the Coloradan. This is not Pro Cycling Manager; it is not quite as simple as one champion leaving and another rider moving up the pecking order seamlessly.
Kuss celebrates winning stage six at the 2023 Vuelta a Espana (Jose Jordan/AFP via Getty Images)
Kuss acknowledges that the sport has become much more professionalized in recent years. “You see other teams with incredible rosters that can buy any good rider,” he says.
With eye-catching winter transfer moves for Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso and Derek Gee-West, super-teams Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe and Lidl-Trek are hot on their heels too.
“Let’s say just a few years ago, we felt we had a big advantage in terms of nutrition or training. Now every other team is at the same level or maybe even better; we don’t know. So we no longer have that mental advantage (of) knowing that we’re always on the cutting edge.”
“When you look inside, you can say: is it the team? Or is it just the general landscape of cycling, how the dynamic of everything has changed?”
Kuss himself is not a rider who makes change for change’s sake. Asked what he adjusted last season in his training and preparation, he says: “Maybe it was less tweaking. Focusing more on what I like to do, what I was good at.
“That approach doesn’t work for everybody, but for me, cycling is pretty simple. When I do it that way, that’s how I get the best out of myself.”
He describes his approach as “enjoy it, go on a nice ride, see as many new places as I can and challenge myself,” he says.
“I don’t want to be stuck doing the comfortable things. I want to do the hardest training ride, the hardest race, the most difficult calendar. Those kinds of things motivate me, all the while staying true to why I like to ride and race.”
While Kuss still has his boyish looks, he has come a long way from his early days as a University of Colorado Boulder student who loved riding off-road trails and played beer pong with friends the night before carrying out physiological testing for LottoNL-Jumbo ahead of signing for them.
“I really had no idea how to execute races, coming to Europe from the US, doing a few road races. It was completely new,” he says, reflecting on his first season as a 23-year-old neo-pro in 2018. “Knowing how to move in the peloton, knowing which side to pull off on in a crosswind,” he says, laughing. “Silly things you never even think about as a mountain biker. You just think about riding hard.”
“But that’s also what kept me stimulated because there were so many new things to learn. Through those seemingly mundane or dumb things, it opened up all these doors.
“Now it’s totally different for most young riders coming into the WorldTour. They already know almost everything.”
“I’m grateful for that formative part of my career,” Kuss adds. “Because, despite struggling in the races, that’s what kept bringing me back to trying to get better. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to make it to the next segment of the race to see what it was like.
“I had no expectation of what it was supposed to be like, what I was supposed to feel. That made it easier for me — or more fun, more adventurous.”
Kuss remains a vital superdomestique for his team leader Jonas Vingegaard – pictured here at the 2025 Tour de France (Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)
The journey continues. The 31-year-old began his ninth season as a pro at Friday’s Muscat Classic and Tour of Oman before competing at the Volta a Catalunya next month.
The Giro d’Italia and Tour de France are also on his schedule, riding in support of double-chasing Vingegaard. Kuss would like to win a stage at the year’s first Grand Tour, a feat which would complete his set at the sport’s most illustrious stage races.
“We’ll see about (doing) the Vuelta, if there’s anything in the tank,” he adds.
There usually is: Kuss has not missed an edition of the race since turning pro. Spain’s geography, “crazy climbs” and people appeal to a man who has made neighboring micro-state Andorra his adopted home.
While Kuss calls his 2026 calendar “pretty simple”, there is little straightforward about potentially doing all three Grand Tours. He possesses a remarkable physiological capacity to digest the kind of workload which might leave peers needing recovery time on the couch.
Kuss pictured on Tadej Pogacar’s wheel during the 2024 edition of Strade Bianche in Tuscany (Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)
He won the 2023 Vuelta after finishing the Giro and Tour in the same season, seemingly suffering no negative after-effects. “The next year, my numbers were crazy good, even better than the year before,” he says of a season which was scuppered by sickness at the wrong moments.
At last year’s Vuelta, Kuss showed he was close to his very best, finishing seventh overall and second on stage 20 behind Vingegaard.
“It was nice to win the race with Jonas, but on a personal level, just to be there and have a more or less consistent race,” he says. “To be good on some of the harder mountain stages was good for my confidence. It’s something I always knew I could do.”
Whatever transpires for Kuss and his team-mates this season, fatherhood is keeping him busy and happy off the bike. Since the birth of daughter Martina in October 2024, he has learned to make better use of his time. That means no more on-the-fly decisions to do an eight-hour training ride.
“I think about the long-term future,” Kuss says. “At first I thought of cycling as a hobby for myself, but I see it now as a career to help support my family or give my daughter excitement when she sees me on TV or comes to see me in a race. That’s also something really nice.”
