Quote Originally Posted by R.D. View Post
Where? Nationals? In 2009, I would agree- she was held up with a shaky FS above both Flatt and Zhang who did 7-triple(!) freeskates. But this year? Zawadzki bombed...Zhang was not really in title contention after the SP...Nagasu did herself in as well. But who should have gone to worlds instead of Czisny? No one has answered that question yet. You folks claim Czisny was held up/didn't deserve to go; well then, who did?

And before you think I'm defending Czisny, believe me, I'm not. She completely dropped the ball here and it's 100% her fault, no matter how much Phil Hersh tries to shift blame to USFS. If she doesn't feel she's in condition to compete (at least competently), it's up to her to do the right thing and WD from the competition. However, where I do think USFS comes in is they have to make sure she is ready- as they learned from Flatt last year, you can't always trust that the competitors have the team's best interest at heart. That said, based on what she did that season and at Nationals, I think she earned the spot. Remember, it was only after Challenge Cup a couple weeks ago that red flags went up re. Czisny.
I have no clear answer to who should have been sent to Worlds this year. What I was pointing out was that there seems to be this strong tradition of anointing winners in America and this kind of practice can create an environment where skaters end up not being properly motivated or trained.

Alissa at her best, even when she was landing triples, always had small jumps with loooonnng set-ups and she was always a slow skater and these things didn't seem to reflect on her scores just as long as she was landing some jumps (and all the talk was about how out of this world her spins were and her spins were so good they were worth triple jumps---really?). If only these things hadn't been ignored, maybe Alissa wouldn't now be skating at Worlds, or she may be skating at Worlds but with a different mindset.