Could I Get the Wi-Fi Password? My Son Might Win the Race of a Lifetime
Sabina Kuss never missed her son Sepp’s bike races. Often, this meant waking up in the early a.m. darkness at her home in Durango, Colo., and turning on the TV, where she and Sepp’s father, Dolph, would sit for hours, watching their son compete in dramatic races like the Tour de France.
Sometimes, when a TV camera found Sepp riding up a mountain, Sabina would go to the screen and pretend to nudge her son up the climb. “I’d push his bottom up the hill," Sabina Kuss told me the other day. “It was hard to not reach out and touch him, especially when I could see his face." A talented cyclist herself, Sabina was the one who had gotten Sepp on a bike as a child, and she tried to watch every minute of his racing–until this past month, when Sepp’s team, Jumbo-Visma, asked him to ride in the Vuelta a Espana, the last of cycling’s three annual “Grand Tours." Sabina Kuss had a conflict, right in the middle of the race: She had arranged to go on an epic 14-day trek with friends through the Dolomite mountains in Italy.
The trek, Alta Via 2, is no polite trail hike. Backpackers spend double-digit days traversing the mountains, often on demanding, rocky trails, staying at night in huts called rifugios. Access to the outside world is minimal.
Wi-Fi can be hard to find. Sabina figured it would work out OK. Before the trek began, she got to Spain and saw Sepp race two early stages.
Sepp’s job at the three-week Vuelta appeared to be the usual: help a teammate win. At 29, Sepp Kuss was one of the best “super domestiques" in cycling–a support rider talented enough to win occasional stages, but largely paid to pace and protect star teammates during grueling, long events. Jumbo-Visma had taken two favorites to the Vuelta: Primož Roglič, a
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