I also don't for one minute believe Evenepoel (or Almeida) can win a GT over the next couple of years & their progression should be incremental & normal, not rushed.
Don't get me wrong, I find Evenepoel exciting as a prospect (& in any case, his ups & downs add some fun to the world tour season), but that Olympics TT (& road race where he was in no way qualified to be viewed as Wout van Aert's equal) should be a wake-up call for Lefevere, DQS & Evenepoel himself: he needs to get stronger if he wants to win the big stuff & that will take time.
You are acting as if his form this season was a natural progression of his early 2020 form. It was/is not, he had a horrible injury and did not get a decent build up after his recovery. Obviously no progression should be rushed, so that's a strange point to make. It however does not mean him or Almeida couldn't win a GT over the next couple of years.
I dont understand the labeling of him as a "GT" talent or why fans and people have pushed him as that this early in his career. He hasnt showed anything at a GT yet. He hasnt even raced for that long, really. He needs more hours on the bike. Both training and racing-wise. He is still catching up on a lot of things that come natural to someone who raced from young age.
They know how to nurture talent. I am not saying anything infront of that word. Just make a list of how many careers they have started. How many wins. How many talents produced. Stars. The list can get pretty long.
I believe the team is able to nurture his talent, keep it at that, to get the best out of him. Whether it comes to one-days races and stage-races. In a few more years hopefully GTs also. Who knows. Maybe he even changes team if that is what he wants to pursue. It should be his choice.
But now is not the time to put all the eggs in that basket. Nor is it what they have done yet. Remco still has things to prove and learn on how to lead and use his team. Become a better rider in all aspects, because there are things he could work on and now he has been forced to focus more on recovering himself after that injury. Still suffering from that with recovery that had complications. I think people are forgetting how many important factors there are here, when they pointing out faults that they think the team has made. Like that is where the problem lies. It is more complicated than that.
I think they had/have a plan but as we all know things happen and things change. People, fans and media just have no patience or understanding how things really work though sometimes.
Give time, time.
The labeling comes from Remco himself, stating when he was still a junior before he signed for DQT, that he wanted to become a GT rider/winner. Nobody "pushed" him, it was his dream and ambition, he didn't care much for 1 day races. Combine that with the fact that in his first year as a pro, he already became EU champ ITT, and silver medalist at the WCC ITT. Then further combine that with him dropping Landa, Sosa, Yates, Kuss, Gaudu, Carapaz etc etc etc in Burgos on a 8.5k @9% climb, and dominating a streak of 1-week races proving his consistency (which he already proved during his junior years, never having a bad day). I'm a bit confused here as what exactly it would otherwise take before we should be able to say "hey, maybe this kid would be good as a GC rider in GT's!" Should we have waited until he actually won one?
DQT have nurtured talent, but never a talent like him, and i'm not just talking about the "magnitude" of his talent, i'm mainly talking about his trajectory. Most of the talent they nurtured, followed a traditional path. A rider who rode 8-12 years in youth cats, becoming pro at +/-20-22, to become a race favorite 2-5 years later. He had only been on a bike for 2 years, at the moment he was already starting the WCC ITT at the age of 19 as one of the biggest favorites. DQT misjudged his rise to the top and did not take adequate action to either slow him down, and prepare him for his new status as favorite. They did not address his lack of experience and lack of technical / bikehandling skills. He did not get any transition, easing into becoming a favorite at the pros. Furthermore, there were camera teams following him at every race in 2020 for a series of documentary episodes of him on TV. Where was Lefevere to advise him against that, or to outright forbid it? And again during the 2021 Giro.
For me the question about him is how much about the hype about his climbing was due to what happened on the road and how much was due to people around him talking about his climbing numbers in trainings, etc.
Probably about 99% of what happened on the road. Burgos had a stacked field due to Covid erasing most other races, it was a stronger GC field than the 2019 Vuelta or the 2020 Giro. It became one of the most important 1 week races of 2020 because of the heavily adjusted calendar. There was no ITT for him to take advantage of like in Algarve or BBT, and yet he absolutely smashed it. Furthermore, what he showed in the first 10 days in the Giro, even in what we now know was far from his best form, he was very strong and 2nd in GC until the sterrati stage. He was Bernal's equal on stage 6, and even on Zoncolan, after he started to crumble, he only lost 20s on Vlasov, 40 seconds on Carthy and 50s on Caruso. There was a lot of anticipation based on the hype, the numbers, and the conviction but imho Burgos showed that he really was that good.