He was no exception, even when he was the victim of a crash caused by a spectator leaning into the road on stage 15 of the Tour de France.

With 128km to go, the North American rider was one of several to fall when a spectator with a cell phone leaned into the peloton's path. Others who fell in the same incident included Jumbo-Visma's teammate Nathan Van Hooydonk, Biniam Girmay (Intermarché Circus Gobert), and Eoghan Bernal (Ineos Grenadier).

Kuss suffered cuts to his elbows and knees in the crash, but quickly remounted and returned to the peloton. He was the last man standing in Jonas Vingegaard's final climb of the race. Taddei Pogachar's teammate Adam Yates accelerated on the last 4km of the Le Bétex climb, and Kuss was separated from the yellow jersey group, but remained in sixth place overall.

"I think the spectators were leaning out onto the road. It was sudden and there are a lot of people at the Tour," Kuss said of the crash. Ideally that doesn't happen, but it's the biggest bike race in the world, so a lot of people don't know exactly what's going on."

"It was getting narrower all over town. We were trying to slow down the peloton and let the break go, but unfortunately someone wanted to take a selfie on the side of it. I didn't notice it."

Kuss downplayed the severity of his injury, insisting that it had little effect on his performance in the remainder of the stage over the Folklars, Croix-Frey, and Aravis passes before the two parts to the finish.

"No, no, luckily the adrenaline got me through the day. 'You just have to keep going. It's an inconvenience, but it could have been a lot worse, and the bike felt pretty good."

Cus team manager Richard Plug was rather nonplussed about the episode, which was reminiscent of the infamous "Opi-Omi" crash on the opening day of the 2021 Tour.

In an interview with Wieler Fritz, Plug claimed that he would have stayed by Vingegaard's side in the finale much longer if Kuss had not dragged the effects of the crash with him.

"On a climb like today, he usually doesn't have to do that. That was the biggest blow today: Nathan went down hard, Dylan [van Baar] went down, Sepp went down. That messed up our tactics today. I didn't have Nathan at the beginning of the stage and Sepp at the end.

However, Vingegaard withstood Pogachar's attack in the last kilometer and finished in the same time as the Slovenian. Like Kus, Vingegaard seemed almost resigned to the unpredictable behavior on the roadside, but he appealed to the spectators in the same way.

"I can't say that spectators are forbidden, but I think they have to act nice," Vingegaard said at the post-race press conference. 'Do not stand on the road and take pictures. Do not enter the road, stay on the side of the road."

Jumbo-Visma, who had led all day Saturday to wear down Pogachar, was slightly more reserved on stage 15, leaving the seemingly indomitable Wout Van Aert to ride up the road in the break. But the Belgian's afternoon ended in frustration, and he had to settle for second place behind Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious). 'Today I proved that I still have morale. I never lost heart."

Meanwhile, the showdown between Vingegaard and Pogachar remains as tight and unpredictable as ever after three days of tense mountain racing. In the second week of racing, the gap between the two is only seven seconds, but could widen even more when the race resumes on Tuesday with a 22-km time trial to Combrue.

"We'll keep exploding every day," Kuss said. The day after tomorrow's time trial is going to be really interesting." The day after tomorrow's time trial is going to be really interesting. Nobody will be able to predict what's going to happen and then it's going to be a really hard mountain stage."