I'm really looking forward to the team time trial fad to die out. Even prologues were way better. Ideally you need head to head racing, but still some form of time gaps.
I was in an urban hill climb event last year that used to be a straight time trial, but was changed last year. The new format was: groups of two or three riders would have a straight race up the hill, with the winner going through to the next round until there were only 2 left in the final. I came second overall, shouldn't have tired myself out doing the over 30's competition too...
What if there was a similar stage i.e. riders split into groups of maybe 4? not too big anyway, and a load of mini races run on a very short hilly stage (1 classics type climb etc). Everyone would get their own time (wouldn't get same time for coming in less than a second down), could seed on last year's results and have the big GC guys last. Or just go on reverse order of the numbers so that riders 1, 11, 21, 31 were last.
Obviously you could get some advantage from drafting but the gaps would be tiny over a 21 stage grand tour.
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