Sepp Kuss won the queen stage of the Giro d'Italia in the Italian Dolomites, riding clear for almost the entire day and powering away to the uphill finish with a solo ride over the final two kilometers of a 151-kilometer, 5,000-meter stage.
Fans and search engines are looking for sepp kuss because he did more than take a stage — he animated the race from the front, joining and then sustaining a relentless attack across six climbs before finishing alone on the summit run to claim the mountain-day victory.
The result was emphatic: Derek Gee-West crossed second and Giulio Ciccone third, while Kuss’s long-range effort proved decisive on the hardest day of the race. The stage’s length and profile—151 kilometers with six climbs and 5,000 meters of elevation gain—gave the win weight; it was not a sprint or a lucky break but a sustained, uphill conquest that marked the queen stage.
Thymen Arensman, who began the day third overall, could not follow an acceleration on the final climb and lost a minute to Jai Hindley, dropping from third to fourth in the general classification. That single minute turned the podium of the overall race; Arensman’s legs failed to match the move that split the contenders and altered the battle for the remaining mountain day.
Jonas Vingegaard finished fifth and kept the pink jersey under control, emerging from the Dolomites with a four-minute cushion over Felix Gall and Jai Hindley. Kuss’s win was a major mountain-day victory for Visma-Lease a Bike, but it changed the stage standings more than the overall race leaderboard: the pink jersey remains with Vingegaard, who absorbed the day’s attacks and crossed the line sufficiently close to preserve his margin.
The Giro now heads into its final heavy mountain stage with a clear, urgent question: can anyone overturn Vingegaard’s four-minute lead before the race ends? Kuss’s solo success reshuffles stage honors and reputations, and Arensman’s minute loss reduced one obvious challenger’s leverage, sharpening the dilemma for teams that still hope to cut into the leader’s advantage on the last mountains.
