Sepp Kuss is out of his first stage-race of the season in what\u2019s yet another early blip for team Visma-Lease a Bike.<\/p>\n
The Colorado climber did not start stage 3 of the Tour of Oman on Monday with sickness. The 31-year-old had lined out for the 5-day race with half an eye on chasing GC to set the engine humming for the year to come.<\/p>\n
Kuss\u2019 exit takes Visma-Lease a Bike down to only four riders in Oman after Axel Zingle and Owain Doull didn\u2019t even make it to day 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cSepp is ill, so we didn\u2019t start him,\u201d Visma-Lease a Bike head of racing Grischa Niermann told Wielerflits<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter losing Axel Zingle and Owain Doull before we\u2019d even raced a meter, we\u2019re unfortunately down another rider. There are many sick riders in the peloton with stomach and intestinal issues,\u201d Niermann said Monday. \u201cThat was also the case with Kuss.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a small setback for Kuss, but part of a frustrating start to the season for the \u201cKiller Bees.\u201d<\/p>\n Wout van Aert fractured his ankle racing cyclocross in early January, and Simon Yates stunned the world with his shock retirement just a few days later.<\/p>\n Last week, Jonas Vingegaard abandoned his plan to debut 2026 in the UAE Tour after he crashed and came down with sickness in recent weeks.<\/p>\n Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla) went on to win stage 3 in Oman on Monday after Kuss\u2019 abandon. The Swiss rider is now 4 seconds up on GC ahead of Wednesday\u2019s decisive finale on Green Mountain.<\/p>\n Kuss is set for a key role for Visma-Lease a Bike in 2026.<\/p>\n The \u201cEagle of Durango\u201d has been slated to follow Vingegaard through his quest to win the Giro d\u2019Italia on debut and double back to beat Tadej Poga\u010dar at the Tour de France. The two are scheduled to team up for the first time this season next month at the Volta a Catalunya.<\/p>\n Visma-Lease a Bike will take solace from the fact it\u2019s not the only one with a packed-out infirmary.<\/p>\n Its archrivals UAE Emirates XRG was decimated by crashes and a pair of bounding kangaroos at the Tour Down Under and then saw rising star Davide Stella sidelined after he tore up his back and glutes in the brutal 100kph crash in the AlUla Tour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/kuss-out-of-oman\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2260048887.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated February 9, 2026 04:06AM Sepp Kuss is out of his first stage-race of the season in what\u2019s yet another early blip for team Visma-Lease a Bike. The Colorado climber did not start stage 3 of the Tour of Oman on Monday with sickness. The 31-year-old had lined out for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1760109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kuss to partner Vingegaard through Giro-Tour double<\/h2>\n