Sepp Kuss crossed the line at Piani di Pezzè alone, arms loose, a stage winner at the Giro d'Italia for the first time. The finish above Alleghe closed the queen stage of the 2026 race: 151 kilometres from Feltre, close to 5,000 metres of climbing, the Passo Giau standing as Cima Coppi. It also completed a rare set. With this win, the American has now taken a stage at all three Grand Tours, adding the Giro to earlier victories at the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España.
How the day was decided
The stage tore itself apart early, as such days do. A large group went clear over the opening climbs, reshaped itself, and thinned as the Dolomites bit. Over the Passo Giau — nearly ten kilometres averaging above nine per cent, topping out past 2,200 metres — Giulio Ciccone took the Cima Coppi points and its prestige. The Italian then pressed on, gaining a gap on the descent of the penultimate climb and starting the run for home with close to a minute in hand.
Kuss let the road do the work. He caught Ciccone with just over two kilometres remaining, and once alongside he did not linger. He accelerated at once, left the Italian behind, and rode in solo. Derek Gee-West came home second at around thirteen seconds; Ciccone held third. Kuss had thought the win gone. "I knew he would accelerate over the top for the mountain points," he told reporters afterwards, describing how the gap opened and how, by the foot of the final climb, he assumed it was settled.
A step in the trajectory
For years Kuss has been cast as cycling's finest lieutenant, the climber who carries leaders to the high mountains and rarely takes anything for himself. That framing is not wrong. Through this Giro he worked again for Jonas Vingegaard, his Visma–Lease a Bike leader, who wore the pink jersey and moved nearer the overall title on the same afternoon. The team's control of the race was near total.
Yet Kuss has his own ledger. He won the 2023 Vuelta a España outright, a Grand Tour champion in his own name, and had already claimed stages at both the Tour and the Vuelta. What was missing was the Giro. The Dolomites gave it to him, on the hardest day of the race, from the front rather than in service of another. The queen stage tends to reward the complete rider, and it did so here.
The helper won on the day that asked the most. That is the line that stays.
