I think he's Lady MacBeth.
He's a killer on the bike. An absolute win at all costs "do whatever it takes" sort of rider who is hyper aggressive on the road & hyper motivated to be the biggest champion in statistical terms. He'll set out to crush everything & everyone, again, again & again. But he's also self-aware of his image & the image he projects i.e. he craves 'the love of the people'. There's a lot of PR involved & I reckon his manager (his wife) plays quite a big role in shaping his public persona. Hence the family stuff laid on thick.
He's a 2024 heavily curated & tightly marketed version of Lance Armstrong. I think the only people who came close to the 'truth' were Netflix, ironically. In their TdF documentary they showed him for what he was: very selfish, self-centered & almost having an anxiety attack because Wout van Aert 'dared' race for someone other than his Majesty Vingegaard.
I thought that was a hilariously close to shining a real light on the personality involved in an otherwise quite mundane & 'safe' series.
I diasgree that he always was a killer on the bike. If that was true, he would have better results earlier in his career. Instead we have plenty of former teammates and sports directors who calls him very lazy and not very serious, yet talented.
I don't think he is natural aggressive either, he learned that at Visma. He is not a born racer unlike riders as Mads Pedersen, Pogacar etc. He 'learned' to be aggressive simply because he is a better rider than most of his competitors, I bet you'll see him riding defensively in July when Pogacar will attack him again and again.
Winning almost all races he participates in is the new normal. MvdP, Van Aert, Evenepoel and Pogacar did it before him, so why shouldn't he be able to do the same when he obviously have the watts to do it. It's not like he was a first mover on that part - far from it. I bet Visma has shaped him in many areas.
I find it very interesting how you try to depict as some self-centered cynic, when I have the complete opposite image of him. If he was who you really think he is, he would have taken the Vuelta win for himself most def. Instead, I'm rather confident he is just shy, extremely introverted and personally I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the spectrum on some level.
He really do loves his family, and I truly believe they mean everything for the man. It gives him that deeper connection he never was able to have with other people, mainly because of his personal characteristics.
He is not exciting as a person, not charismatic, and he will never be good at standing in front of the camera. I do think he is just being himself, and I would expect nothing else. This is cycling after all, not an episode of The Kardashians.
Edit: My point is that Visma has shaped him in many areas. This is also the impression you get when you have listened to interviews and podcasts with former teammates, current teammates and the sports directors at Visma. Everyone agrees that he has taken huge steps and developed enormously since he came to Visma, both personally and as a rider. This is why the takt that he always was some self-centered and ruthless killer is wrong and dumb.
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