I hope nobody minds me quoting myself from late in the thread of Thursdays Stage thread; The copy/pasted Quote
"My two cents, and my opinion is worth you you each paid for it LOL
I think that a good solution to the problem of riders taking it east on the flats could be using this example..... Lets say the average for the field over the flat part and to keep the numbers even lets say..... the first 30K flat is on average ridden by all those riding 45 minutes so that anyone lower than the average time would not be eligible for the KOM Points. Maybe I am over thinking it but I think that minimum would be a good solution, it would still give an advantage to those not worried about their ITT time but they would have to be careful not to be below that moving average. They wouldn't know what the actual time would be until the end so they would have to be on the safe side just in case."
Just an Idea to make the KOM points for this type ITT more equitable. Just a suggestion I am sure there are good arguments against it but putting it out there.
In fairness, though, your ability to maintain speed on the flats should have absolutely nothing to do with your right to wear the polka dots. The maillot à pois is for the king of the mountains, so in an ITT situation it absolutely should reflect time spent between a time check at the base of the climb and the time check at the summit of the climb (on this occasion, the finish) only. If riders take it easy for 30km to be able to go nuts for the last 6km to get the mountains jersey, so be it. I mean, isn't that exactly what Richard Virenque, Rafał Majka, Mikel Nieve, Mikel Landa, Stefano Garzelli, David Moncoutié, Franco Pellizotti, Julián Arredondo, Giulio Ciccone and countless others have done to win the mountains jersey in the first place? Lost time voluntarily on the parts of the course not relevant to their GPM bid (once their GC bids failed in some instances) and then bided their time until the part of the course that's important for the mountains jersey before expending their efforts?
The system already biases heavily toward HCs and adds the double point summits while reducing the relative value of cat.2 and below compared to the pre-2011 system anyway, which was with the intention of improving the calibre of GPM winner and having more GC riders in contention for it. To me it's more of a farce that there's so many points in stages 17 and 18 relative to the rest that the competition for the jersey doesn't come alive until the final week anyway, but with that in mind, I don't see why Carapaz riding within himself to then go hell for leather on Planche des Belles Filles would make him a less worthy KOM than Pogačar. In fact, Carapaz' current GC position between 10th and 20th is a pretty reasonable spot for the king of the mountains to be in, and he fits the profile of a traditional KOM better than most of the riders who've won it in recent years - he's a top drawer rider and a specialist climber whose own GC ambitions have gone awry, who has then late in the race sought to rectify this and bring the team something from the race with attacks from distance in the mountains. He hasn't won it almost by accident as a by-product of battling for the GC like Froome, and he hasn't won it by dropping continual time and just collecting summits while not influencing the race at all like many we see nowadays. For being one of only four riders to have actually made the jersey a goal at one point this race (one of whom crashed out on stage 3), being the best climber of those and being visible throughout the mountains of the last week, Richard Carapaz is a more than worthy winner of the polka dots, even if he has to ride the first 30km of tomorrow's TT at cyclotourist pace to do so.