chuckm said:Johnny withdrew from US Nationals 2003 after injuring himself in the FS, and lost his bye to Nationals 2004. He didn't really have to 'start from scratch', because he was not seriously injured, and there was no training gap. He just had to go through the preliminary competitions, and he aced both Regionals and Sectionals because he was in great shape.
Last season, Weir showed up at the Liberty summer (monitoring) competition in July 2003 and proved was ready to compete in 2003-04. As a result, he was assigned to Finlandia Trophy (after Ryan Bradley withdrew) and received a bye through North Atlantic Regionals in October. He almost won Finlandia (very close split decision), then won Eastern Sectionals to qualify for 2004 Nationals, and started peaking after that.