This "lack of time trialing in the GTs favours the pure climbers, a true allrounder should be able to win a GT" topos is the worst of all.
Please, how many pure climbers won the Tour or the Giro in the past 15 years?
Why did Sky make such a living from looking for the best time trialers and then making them climb instead of just looking for the best climbers, if those win GTs?
What is Pogacar if not a true allrounder?
Since when is Froome, the most successful GT rider of the past 10 years, a pure climber?
Now let's imagine there were 100k of more or less flat time trialing. Guys like Bernal, decent, but not great time trialers, wouldn't stand any chance. Nibali wouldn't stand a chance. Instead Ganna might have a good chance and I wouldn't call him an allrounder. Rohan Dennis would be among the absolute top candidates anyway. Now then it's always "you need to make the mountain stages harder", but how hard exactly would you have to make them? Lasting for 8 hours?
The level of athletism and professionalism has just risen to a level, where the old physical builds don't work anymore as good comparisons.
If Evenepoel manages to only hang on to Bernal in the mountains he will win this Giro with it's ridiculous amount of time trialing. And he's for certain not a pure climber.
So with Pogacar, Roglic and Evenepoel being among the best GT riders we have at the moment, and van Aert probably able to turn into one, not even the Vuelta being won by a pure climber the last years, please stop this "the allrounders are discriminated against" for now. You can come again when Bardet wins this Giro, Landa the Tour and Ciccone the Vuelta.
Blueroads, i like you a lot, so i don't mean to offend you, but this has to be the biggest crock i've read on the forum in quite some time.
I suggest taking a map with elevation differences of France. Then look at how much of it consists of high mountains and compare that to the amount of stages that pass through there. It's the Tour de France, not Nepal, yet every year 1/4th or more of the stages are in favor of climbers while the high mountains are only a small part of France. The Tour does not represent France's topology by a long shot. And still you are making an argument for those poor climbers who wouldn't stand a chance with 100k's of TT. So? What about the poor TT'ers who don't stand a chance with more than double the km's of climbing? What about poor Tony Martin and poor Ganna. How are they ever to win the Tour? Why shouldn't classics riders like van der Poel or Van Avermaet have a chance of winning the Tour? There are many more classical routes and rolling terrain to be traveled than mountain routes in France.
But i get it, we all like watching mountain stages, and god forbid those skinny climbers lose 5 minutes in the crosswinds. How unfair. While i'm all for the amount of mountain stages in the Tour, the Tour, if anything, is far more skewed towards climbers than it is towards all-rounders and TT'ers. As it stands, van Aert doesn't stand a chance against a fit Bernal, while he is by far the more complete and all-round rider. Even when skin and bones like last year, it would be no contest. He would need to lose an additional -anorexic low- 5kg in order to stand a chance. Why is that deemed normal? And why are you saying Roglic and Evenepoel aren't climbers? Because they weren't born in Colombia? Or because they ALSO can timetrial? I'd praise the day we get an actual mountain TT. Start at the foot of Mont Ventoux, all the way up. And we'll see who the real climbers are. Or because they can't hide behind their team mates for 2/3rds of the way, this is also unfair for the climbers? Then what do they actually do better, and why should we favor or protect them so much? Why do they get a different treatment that heavy TT'ers or classic specialists don't get? How come a guy like Alaphilippe, one of the most versatile riders in the peloton, can't even get near a top spot in his best season ever, and even when he finishes outside of the podium, the clinic forum is bursting at the seams, because apparently he shouldn't even be considered to be able to compete. That's how much the poor climbers are at a disadvantage.
A 100km of ITT is deemed unfair, but 250km of climbing isn't. Not that i'm expecting 100k of TT anytime soon, but it would be a good thing. Maybe the "climbers" would learn to practice riding crosswinds and get on their TT bikes once in a while, instead of assuming they can get away with focusing only on what they do best. Maybe they would also get better at solo efforts in the valley. Last year, one of the smallest guys in the peloton was one of the most impressive riders in the crosswinds, even in heavy rain, so if Higuita can, why can't others? He's not half bad at TT'ing either by the way.
To be clear, i'm not advocating of doing away with mountain stages, i'm simply saying a race like the TDF is in fact already skewed towards climbers. And if you don't want to see Pogacar, Roglic and Evenepoel as climbers, than at least they are TT'ers who learned/invested in how to climb. In doing so, they also lose part of their TT capacities. But that's normal... so why can't we expect climbers to learn how to TT at the cost of their top-end climbing skills? You can't have it both ways. Either they're all climbers, and Roglic, Evenepoel, Thomas... are just better riders since they can also TT. Or you see them as TT'ers who learned to climb, and in that case i don't see why they should learn to climb at the expense of their main skill while "climbers" shouldn't learn to TT.
I'll take one short flat TT (13k), one long rolling terrain TT (40k) and a mountain TT (20k).
PS: TTTs should only count for team classification, not for individual GC.
Love and kisses regardless.