Usually I would agree, that it's better to support your leader fully. But look at the situation now, Roglic crashed so badly he won't be in contention for the win anyway with however much help he got / gets. And it wasn't van Aerts fault Roglic crashed.
I'm trying to be objective here, and it looks to me like you are an immense Roglic fan trying to find an outlet for your anger.
I'm just disappointed. I also feel that Roglic is one of those riders who somehow needs to permanently justify his number one position on the team, which is crazy in my mind.
We had this last year when Dumoulin was named joint leader in the Tour (anyone could see that was "hopeful" at best) & it resulted in him going mental in the Pyrenees when he realized he didn't have the legs, pulling like mad (against team orders) & breaking down in tears afterwards (& we saw in the code yellow documentary at one point he even had to apologize to his teammates for criticizing team tactics). JV were not a happy family last year.
And then in the Vuelta (one month later), Dumoulin was once again named co-leader (& some hints Roglic would ride for him if he proved stronger) & the result was another Dumoulin meltdown & he quit after a week. And here we are in this Tour where once again Roglic didn't have full leadership (I mean the "official" statements from the team pre-Tour was about Kruijswijk being co-leader, i.e. as crazy as that sounds, I now feel they were telling the truth) & they sent a WVA (who had just returned from an operation) to play his own cards with his own leadout man.
Oh & WVA saying he wouldn't ride hard in the mountains like last year before the Tour started. That's not exactly #samenwinnen which is what Roglic really needed to beat Pogacar (just like he had in Basque Country or the Vuelta last year after Dumoulin quit).
If anything it means that I want the best riders to do what their capable of. Or is that you disagree with my top 5 statement? In my eyes both Roglic and van Aert are top 5 riders in the current peloton, and as a team you want to keep your stars happy. The way you do that is by allowing them to chase their goals and not keep them on a leash.
Roglic going for GC and van Aert trying to go for yellow in the first week aren't mutually exclusive, especially when the latter was working for the former in both stage 1 and stage 3. And now it looks like JV made the right choice in that regard since Roglic going for GC is out of the question after today. The only thing you could criticize them for is that they let Vingegaard wait for Roglic in stage 3.
You're kidding, right? When Roglic crashed, no one knew how badly he was really hurt. So he could have just had scratches & recovered that night (JV didn't know, no one did). So you would have had Vingegaard say "scr*w you Roglic, I'm going for myself now"... as soon as Roglic crashed, without knowing the full extent of the injuries?
That's not how a team wins the Tour. And that's the point here, i.e. JV could only win the Tour with Roglic. By aiming for auxiliary honours with Wout van Aert, they weakened that GC objective. And yeah, those objectives (GC & stage hunting with other riders) pretty much always are in contradiction, hence why it's only the lower GC hopefuls (young prospects like Gaudu or older guys who're no longer at their best like Quintana) who have to put up with a team with split objectives.
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