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Teams & Riders Sepp Kuss is the next Sepp Kuss thread

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^^Agree. That kind of tactics only work if you have an Armstrong or a Froome who can take it to the next level and drop everyone.

Roglic didn't have that extra gear in the Tour/Vuelta. That's not to say he wasn't slightly better than everyone (barring Pogacar's itt) but it was a ton of work by JV to gain 10 seconds here and there.

It was almost as if JV's train was too strong for Roglic. It's not easy following Martin, Van Aert, Gesink, Dumoulin, Bennette and then Kuss. Any one of those guys is more than capable of winning a GT stage or a big one-day race. Or in Dumoulin's case, a GT...

Of course, they won the Vuelta and if not for a fluky ITT would have also won the Tour...so it would have been harder to criticize.
 
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It would be easier to accept the argument that they couldn't have dropped Pogačar if they'd actually tried to. And if they hadn't just let him go up the road one day when Roglič had been able to follow him, because "it was too early to take the maillot jaune" even though they took it one day later after riding on the front all day anyway. Maybe Engels was scared and confused what to do without the safety blanket of Sepp scaring people out of attacking, and forgot what actual decision-making in a race looks like. Either they underestimated Pogačar so disrespectfully that they didn't think they needed to do any work to win the Tour, or the Jumbo DSes were Ned Flanders' parents. "You've got to help us, doctor, we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
 
It would be easier to accept the argument that they couldn't have dropped Pogačar if they'd actually tried to. And if they hadn't just let him go up the road one day when Roglič had been able to follow him, because "it was too early to take the maillot jaune" even though they took it one day later after riding on the front all day anyway. Maybe Engels was scared and confused what to do without the safety blanket of Sepp scaring people out of attacking, and forgot what actual decision-making in a race looks like. Either they underestimated Pogačar so disrespectfully that they didn't think they needed to do any work to win the Tour, or the Jumbo DSes were Ned Flanders' parents. "You've got to help us, doctor, we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
I think they just severely underestimated Pogacar and overestimated Roglic's time trial abilities after 3 weeks. I think Pogacar could have won in a variety of ways.
 
It would be easier to accept the argument that they couldn't have dropped Pogačar if they'd actually tried to. And if they hadn't just let him go up the road one day when Roglič had been able to follow him, because "it was too early to take the maillot jaune" even though they took it one day later after riding on the front all day anyway. Maybe Engels was scared and confused what to do without the safety blanket of Sepp scaring people out of attacking, and forgot what actual decision-making in a race looks like. Either they underestimated Pogačar so disrespectfully that they didn't think they needed to do any work to win the Tour, or the Jumbo DSes were Ned Flanders' parents. "You've got to help us, doctor, we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
Nobody could have expected Pogacar to ride that TT. I'm still not quite sure i believe it now, but that is ultimately irrelevant as far as Jumbo's lack of initiative is concerned. Even had Pogacar ridden a TT more in line of that of other mortals, Roglic still could have had a mechanical, a puncture or two, even crashed in case it started raining (harder) and the result could have been the same. So i can't for the life of me imagine Jumbo had any more cards to play but decided against it, unless they are a bunch of morons. I think Roglic simply hit his limits throughout this TDF and Jumbo knew it. No matter how they would/could have used Kuss differently, that would likely have been irrelevant if Roglic couldn't go any faster himself. In fact, i think there is a good chance had Kuss been used to drill it on the last climb, that we could have seen Jumbo's bluff. What if Kuss was put on a leash because they knew he would otherwise reveal Roglic's relative weakness? They bluffed, they used Kuss as a decoy to avert attention from Roglic.

I think the only other play Jumbo had, in retrospect, was had Dumoulin been as good or better, and they had 2 guys in the top 3 or top 5, that they could have tag-teamed Pogacar. But in 3 weeks of racing, there was only one moment when Roglic gave the impression of being -ever so slightly- better than Pogacar, when he finished 15 seconds ahead of him on CdlLoze. One day, 15 seconds.
 
Good win, I thought Valverde was going to hunt him down at one point. And I enjoyed his explanation of his tactics...

As for when he made his stage winning move on the Beixalis, rather than planning it in terms of steepness or a particular corner, Kuss had a very original explanation. He said that he had timed his attack to be sure that he would see his girlfriend and her family on the ascent.

She had sent him a message to indicate their exact placing, he explained, and had thought, “OK, for sure I need to do something before then, so I can take the time to see them. It was really special to have them supporting me on a day like this.”

 

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