"Bice racer disgracefully races his bike". Nah dude, team orders stopping a grand tour winning leader from racing would have been the disrespectful (not to mention boring for fans of racing) thing.
The only slightly shady thing for me is lying in interview about intentions. You're all clearly riding as if you want to win, fess up.
Conspiracy theory time. Did van aert gift it to laporte? I can't believe he could close like that and not have the legs to take it to the line after laporte was on his own for 20km