Tell me a route in the last 10 years where Pogacar wouldn't be a massive favourite. Harder courses are normally better for spectators. Without Pogacar, this race would be so unpredictable and funny. It is not the route, the problem is Pogacar and the massive gap to his rivals.
A race is interesting when you have multiple favourites that might win it. How hard it is has nothing to do with it.
A harder race makes it so that less people are able to win it, and thus gives you a more select group of possible candidates. A race can be made hard by multiple aspects. Distance, altitude, technical. Based on those 3 you get a number of different favourites for a race.
Liege => Long distance, a lot of altitude => Pogacar, Evenepoel, Roglic, etc. Riders that are able to go over longer hills for multiple times
Roubaix => Long distance, technical => WVA, MVDP, etc. Riders that have the technical strength to ride over cobbles. Due the less amount of altitude meters, more riders can win this, which makes it exciting.
De Ronde => Long distance, technical, bigger amount of altitude than Roubaix => Pogacar, WVA, MVDP, etc. Other riders are now also able to win this, like Pogacar while for others it might be too hard due to the amount of altitude.
Strade used to have a great balance between these, but has changed a lot since 2021. It always used to be around 180km's with 3.000m of altitude. It's now 215km's and 3700m of altitude. Combined with gravel roads which is more technical, you get less riders able to win it.
Pogacar is indeed multi-talented that he's technically strong enough, while a feather weight and has a big engine. So he can win on all terrains. But if you keep pushing these races to be hard in every of those 3 categories, then you only get Pogacar as a favourite which makes it more boring.
You need to find a good balance as a race organizer. It's not hard to make a difficult race that's only winnable by 1 person. It's hard to make a balanced race with a select group of possible winners.
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