The way I read your point was basically "If they want to do it right, it has to be how it used to be!"
Please clarify what you meant if that isn't the case.
OK I give in. You're right.
(previous answer to you written with quite a headache and confusion in my already messy head, I apologize).
However, I am of the opinion that sometimes it can be healthy to revisit the past with new glasses.
To me it sometimes seems like a bit too much of an auto-reply when the main justification is "ok that was back then, move on".
A long-distance TTT is still a completely different experience for the viewers compared to a short TTT - with many technical passages on a pancake-flat route (as the other day). Of course, a short TTT delivers insight into the capabilities of the different teams with the purely technical abilities comparing each team.
However, on the long distances - over varying terrain with fewer super-technical passages (festival of 90 degree corners and so on), by then you witness the slow wear and tear and you have the opportunity to closely study with magnifying glass (or e.g. helped by drone cams as mentioned as an idea here), the symbiosis for each individual team and can spot where it may start to be critical 5k later.
I've witnessed it so many times, but I think the last time was the aforementioned Tours-Blois TTT in the 2005 Tour - and I'm on the oppinion that the GTs severely misses that extra layer of tense ingredient; everything is on stake - and it becomes pure art to watch, where it's up to the strongest TT riders to dose their forces precisely - and then the solitaire element of where and when to use which riders, medium long uphill climbs, downhill winding descents, 10 km of straight flat stretch, etc.
My experience is that it's a completely different experience for the viewers than the one the day before yesterday.
Such a long TTT should of course be done in the first week, when there hasn't been that much dropout yet.
I recognize and acknowledge the main anchors speaking against.
- a GC can be decided early in the race
- juicy stuff from the past that belongs in another forum.
My suggestion is to make use of the relatively new invention - where each rider's time counts. I think, for example, it's been cool to see a domestique or sprinter riding leadout for a team's GC rider towards the finish line.
If you then translate this into a long TTT distance, then in my opinion you get a really interesting event - which is not just a misplaced puppet like the day before yesterday (I haven't gotten away from that attitude after seeing a bit of the stage anyway) - a TTT where everything is at stake and as a 'main event' on par with the best mountain stages, whereby such an event has relevance.
Of course with the risk that a GC can then become more locked after such a stage. However, I would like the organizers to have the courage for once. Some object "what can you get back commercially on that account". Here my conviction is, that such kind of TTT event will be a self-selling piece of art. As I've mentioned before here - It has happened before; with days of talk and and sparking suspence in the air leading up to - just like on the biggest mountain stages.
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