Nobody is saying he should not get his chances, if his level is there, but that, in the meantime, maybe he should settle into the idea that for now (unless Evenepoel does not perform up to expectations and hopes) he'll be on support duties in the GTs they are riding together.
Since he went rather too quickly, if you ask me, from "I'm too talented and too ambitious to spend my career supporting someone else," to "maybe I'll be going to the GTs to ride for Remco or maybe I'll go with a free role," I was a bit like, whoa, wait a minute, now let's not get ahead of ourselves. One certainly hopes he doesn't expect to have a "free role" at the next Giro or at the Tour 2024, because if he does then that's crazy, I don't care what anybody says.
Of course I remember the two-option tactic between Bernal and Thomas, but this is a bad analogy, because Thomas was the established veteran with a Tour victory under his belt and many others in the service of Wiggins-Froome, whilst Bernal was the enfant terrible (in the new prodigy sense) who the team was building it's future around and made no mystery about it. Then the road, as always, dictated the law, but afterwards I seem to recall this created considerable tension when it came to negotiating Thomas's new contract. And speaking of Wiggins-Froome, do we really want that to play out again in the Belgian version (also considering Evenepoel is no Wiggins)? As far as Roglic and Vingegaard go on Jumbo-Visma, I'd say the dynamic was largely the same, only that Roglic and Vingegaard are like Thomas-Bernal 2.0 performance wise. And Jumbo-Visma are lucky in my opinion that Roglic crashed thus compromising his Tour, because that settled the matter without the potential for internal conflict that could have ruined Jumbo-Visma's triumph, with one neutralizing the other in the assault against Pogacar. And now, not surprisingly, Roglic isn't racing the Tour, because it's preferable to have one chief so everybody acts accordingly. Fortunately for Jumbo-Visma they can send one to the Giro and still have enough fire power at the Tour for the other, since keeping them together is messy.
Only when you have a veteran in his twilight and a young star on the rise is it unavoidable to have two chiefs, but this is never the most convenient approach. Too many roosters in the hen house inevitably causes conflict of interests. I also remember the case of a certain Hinault-Lemond. Sure it ended up being one of the most memorable of Tours, but it was a team disaster made worse by the treachery of a double-crossing ds. The aftermath was nervous burnout and thus an ill-conceived hunting outing, which led to the team's effective termination in the wake of the other's retirement. Here the situation is different, as both riders are young and in the early stages of their careers. So perhaps a better analogy is the internal clash that made it impossible for Lemond to remain on the same team as Fignon, which is the scenario I imagine here should Van Wilder expect to lead a GC on the team any time soon. Unfortunately, right now Soudal-QS doesn't have the luxury of depth to send two chiefs to two different GTs for GC, so one is necessarily going to have to support the other. Unless they plan on sending one of them to two GTs, but I don't think they would do that right now given their ages. But if and when they do, who and with what ambitions? So that begs to ask a couple of questions. How soon can Soudal-QS build a team with the kind of depth required to wage a two-GT assault with two separate riders? Secondly, when does Van Wilder expect to have the team for himself on certain truly big occassions? Two, three years? I sense that Patrick could have his work cut out for him managing this situation, like Guimard did back in the 80s. That's all I'm saying, not that "every rider in the world should (only) ride for Pogacar or Evenepoel."
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