Red Dog, please tell me why it ends up that way! Why not just spread the best ladies around evenly, so that the field is not stacked in some Grand Prix events and pretty empty in others.
If I were assigning GP spots, I'd have Mao Asada at the cup of China and Kimmie Meissner at the Cup of Russia. That would make those two a bit more competitive. And the other GP events wouldn't suffer. Skate America without Mao would have still been pretty competitive because of Ando + Meissner. Tropee Eric Bombard would also do just as well without Kimmie because Ando + Kim would be competing there.
Btw, due to my arrangement, Kimmie would have no problems securing a GPFinal spot because she'd get a very high placement at the Cup of Russia Same for Mao, who would be very highly placed at Cup of China.
It's similar to team sports when you have a weak conference and a strong conference, but this is different. Different in that every year these "conferences" change (the same skaters aren't assigned to the same event year after year) so you get these "stacks" where one competition is much tougher than the other. I suppose the bright side of it all is that it gives lesser skater a shot at the Final as well as the big ones. However, good skaters can be shut out because they placed lower in a really tough group. I think back to qualifying at worlds where one group might be significantly tougher than another. It was even worse because with the 6.0/placement system, if you screwed up in qualifying you were basically out of the medals. But those days are (hopefully) over.