Kuss takes queen stage to cap a brilliant Giro d'Italia for Visma

Cor Vos

It's not quite #GCKuss, but American climber Sepp Kuss got his biggest personal result since his stunning 2023 Vuelta a España overall win, soloing to victory at the Giro d'Italia on the race's queen mountain stage.

Kuss, who's spent most of his three weeks in Italy riding superbly in support of Visma-Lease a Bike leader Jonas Vingegaard's overall campaign, joined the day's big breakaway and hung tough over five categorized climbs before counterattacking on the sixth and final ascent to Alleghe and going clear in the last two kilometers.

With the win, Kuss joins the group of riders to have won a stage of all three Grand Tours. He said post-race that the win had not been the main plan, but that his team gave him the green light to go in the break. Jonas Vingegaard himself had little trouble on the day, with solid support from other Visma teammates and ably matching all moves on the final climb to keep a firm grip on his race lead with two days to go.

The main challenge was to win the pink jersey with Jonas, and so far it's looking good, but when they told me the other night that I had the chance to go in the break, I knew I had to seize the opportunity.

–Kuss on the chance to win a Giro stage

[race_result id=13 stage_id=89984 count=5 gc=0 year=2026] [race_result id=13 stage_id=89984 count=5 gc=5 year=2026]

How it happened

• With almost 5,000 meters of climbing, stage 19 was always going to be one for the climbers. The question was just whether glory would go to the breakaway or the GC group. In the end it was a little of both.
• With just one more stage left before the expected sprint finish in Rome, the fight for the break was fierce, with the composition not fully established until after 50 km of racing. The 20-odd group was the usual motley "last chance saloon" makeup of a third-week Grand Tour stage. There were teams that hadn't yet won a stage – your Movistars and Pinarello-Q36.5s; teams that had, like UAE Team Emirates-XRG, EF Education-EasyPost; a few dark-horse GC candidates – Tudor's Michael Storer and Lidl-Trek's Derek Gee-West – looking for a stage or a bump up the standings; various lieutenants of GC riders like Visma-Lease a Bike's Sepp Kuss and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's Giulio Pellizzari; and riders vying for other jersey competitions, chiefly Lidl-Trek's Giulio Ciccone in the maglia azzurra of best climber.

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