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100% agree with your post. I just wanted to dissuade people from thinking that his crash out of contention was in any way an unsightly blot on his career. I really think the guy doesn't necessarily have to win every time to feel like he's helping a sport he really cares about & is passionate about promoting, especially through it's highest profile event.

And maybe that's what I sensed before - that his focus is not so much on winning for individual glory now (surely he's had enough of that), but on pushing the group aspect & ramping up the mass popularity of this sport and make his final appearance his "Pay It Forward" tour.

He's involved in advocating for cycling in lots of ways through the new team, through his shop, and a proposed bikeway & commuter biking center in Austin, for example. If he can pull off some audience-pleasing fireworks to get somebody else on the podium, I strongly suspect that he'd feel that was good for his resume now that he's more involved on the business end in other words, even though most of his fans wouldn't get that it was a big deal & feel it was somehow a disappointing comedown to be riding for the sake of someone else's glory in the TdF.