We've seen some skills being displayed by the pro riders down the years, but we've never witnessed this live during a race; a rider changing the batteries of his rear derailleur on the move. But that's exactly what Sepp Kuss (Jumbo Visma) did on the Giro yesterday when he was stuck in one gear with just over 30km to go after his rear derailleur battery went flat.
As Kuss was using SRAM - which has separate power sources for the front and rear derailleurs - he took the battery out of the back, which he lost on the road. Once that was done, Kuss then went to the front derailleur, taking the working battery out and inserting it in the rear.
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His move - had it been successful - would have meant he was stuck in the big ring for the remainder of the stage. But he would have had the full range of gears on the back. He managed to swap the battery on the move, and showed great skill doing that. But his trick didn't work. His gears still wouldn't click into action, even with the new battery inserted into the rear derailleur.
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Kuss explained after the race he had already been forced to change bike when the incident happened. And after having the problem on his spare bike, and failing to fix it with the battery swap, he was forced to change bikes again. Ultimately his eagerness to catch the front group again resulted in a crash.
"My shifting stopped working and I tried everything, change the batteries, everything, but it still didn't work," he told The Cycling Podcast. "I had to do (another) bike change and I thought I was close to catching the front group again but maybe took too many risks on the downhill and slid out."
