You can dig back a few years and see me actually hailing him in the Tour of Utah as the best climbing performance of the season. However, for me to soften my dislike of him, I feel he needs to be away from Rogla as much as possible (and possibly away from Jumbo-Visma to facilitate that, as their team car is the real problem), as he is infinitely more interesting when he isn't being used in this negative reinforcement role as non-domestiquing domestique, who only exists to discourage racing by looking strong without actually doing anything to distance others. None of Jumbo's other leaders are as reliably elite, so Kuss might actually be used to domestique positively to drop or isolate others, or given freedom to do his own thing, when that is the case. As soon as they put him in a team with Rogla, suddenly 15 riders are tapping out the tempo of the third best Jumbo rider on every mountain and Sepp is breathing through his nose, riding all the way to the summit without turning a pedal in anger, just there to ensure nobody else dares try to be entertaining. Unfortunately, because of how strong he is as a climber, but how inconsistent he has been in stages like TTs, he always gets selected as a helper for Rogla, so we only ever get to see interesting Sepp on rare occasions, and on those occasions I largely root against him because of his usual role.
Oh, or maybe he could slap Peter Sagan in a post-stage fight. That would probably make him rise in my esteem.
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