When the best time trialist is also the best climber, the chances are they're going to win because the improvement in professionalism and depth of the bunch as well as tactical developments over the last 30-40 years mean that GC riders have largely boiled down to some kind of combination of the two, unless something unusual happens or they don't make it to the finish. Neutering one element or the other won't change that.
I don't particularly enjoy time trials either, but the idea of a Grand Tour is to be the ultimate test of a (road) cyclist, proving themselves over a set of supreme endurance and taking on a bit of everything that road cycling has to throw at them. While I am much more likely to be found paying homage to the romantic, swashbuckling climbers like Fuente, Jiménez or Herrera through the annals of the forum... I also recognise that for them, the multi-col lone escapes and solos weren't a stylistic choice - they were the only way by which they could compete for the GC, because they would lose so much time in flat stages and ITTs. Now, unless the weather plays ball or the flat stage is otherwise non-standard (e.g. a cobbles stage), GC riders are too well protected in flat stages for them to really create gaps that heavier, more all-round GC candidates can exploit (and the importance of this is known to all GC contenders, you don't have a Bahamontes slowly drifting to the back over and over again unless this is a conscious choice, such as with Simon Yates), so you're left with the time trials.
Take for example the 1999 Vuelta a España. In the 6km prologue, José María Jiménez loses 25 seconds. But it's ok, it's only a prologue, and that time loss is to González de Galdeano, not Ullrich. Olano is at +1", but that's nothing Chava can't overturn on '98's evidence, right? Olano wins a 51km ITT on stage 6, just under a minute ahead of Ullrich. Iván Parra is in the top 10 on the day, and Heras, in 21st, is over 4 minutes back. Chava is 85th, six and a half minutes down. The final TT, on the penultimate day, is a hillier affair, over a long but gradual climb from El Tiemblo to Ávila. Chava, buoyed by the tougher parcours and local roads to him (he comes from El Barraco, just outside Ávila) as well as that week 3 TT suiting the GC men thing, is up in 25th place - still six and a half minutes down on Ullrich, but Ullrich does an Indurain demolition job beating almost everybody by three minutes. Olano is of course out of the race by now. The thing is... this was Chava's level in a time trial. He made his brother in law look like Cancellara. And yet he still contended. He still finished 5th in the GC. He still won the stage on the Angliru and finished top 3 in three other mountain stages. But he was losing twelve minutes plus to Ullrich on time trials - ending at +9'24". That's with 103km of ITT - a huge amount by modern standards, but it's that time loss that gave Jiménez the freedom to light up the mountains and be the infuriatingly inconsistent romantic hero that he was. If he's a minute and a half down on the GC because they've only had 18km of time trialling all three weeks, no way does he get allowed up the road. Ever.
But... José María Jiménez never won a Grand Tour. And here's the kicker: barring an outlyingly super performance à la Pantani '98, nor should he have. I'm sure I would have done what Echavarrí did in '98 and chosen Chava over Olano, because he's the kind of rider I adore. But that type of rider should have to be the ultra-mythical type to win a GT, because they're too lopsided a skillset. Look at how many GTs overall were won by Pantani, Fuente, van Impe, Bahamontes. Hell, Herrera won one, and that was acquired more or less by default with Kelly's withdrawal. Neither Jiménez, Julio or José María, won a GT. They won the GPM and they tried to fight back into the GC. But nowadays there's no reason for the pure one-dimensional grimpeur not to think they're a GC specialist. Ignore Wiggins' transformation because his climbing in that race gets overlooked because of how dominant he was in the time trials - pick a pure time triallist. If we don't think Filippo Ganna and Fabian Cancellara are all-round enough to win GTs, then why do we accept that, say, Miguel Ángel López or Mikel Landa are, because they're climbers and not rodadores? Yes, I'd rather watch Supermán too, and I always enjoy when he succeeds because win lose or draw he'll usually entertain me... but the courses should be set in a way to find that sweet spot where riders like him aren't disadvantaged so much that they can't think they can compete... but they are disadvantaged enough that they can only actually win by pulling out a historic super-performance as a climber to overcome their deficits elsewhere.
Also, increasing the time loss for riders like that in the TTs means you can get away with tougher mountain stages that allow more time to be won and lost. I said earlier, I've actually been pleased with the way ASO has handled flat and transitional stages in the last couple of years. The flip side is that mountain stages have been lacking, largely being like a supporting cast but without any wow factor or any real genuine queen stage. So you don't end up making the climbers that much more competitive, you just end up giving the riders the same materials but a smaller canvas to paint on.
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