Let's see if the numbers give support to these opinions.
At U.S. Nationals, the judges gave Rachael PCSs of 61.71. At the Oympic she got 59.48.
At U.S. Nationals she got a total of 6.64 in GOEs. At the Olympics she got 6.40.
A I am not seeing a loud and clear message, to the embarrassment of U.S. judges, in these numbers.
So what was the difference in her total scores? Rachael lost a total of 6.72 for the two downgrades.
Now let's look at Mirai's scores at U.S. Nationals compared to Rachaels. Mirai beat Racahel in GOEs, 8.28 to 6.64, and (just barely) in PCS (61.78 to 61.71).
So why did Mirai lose both to Rachael and to Ashley in the LP? Mirai had three downgrades which cost her a whopping 10.26 points. (By the way, the judges disagreed with the tech panel at least on Mirai's 2A+3T. Five of the nine judges gave her positive GOEs, with two judges giving her a +2).
So in both of these events the result was wholly determined by downgrades which were discernible only to the tech specialist in slo-motion. I do not see any support for claims that the U.S. judges picked on Mirai and boosted Rachael, or that the international judges are in the business of sending sinister messages to anyone. Mirai got some unlucky calls at Nationals and Rachael got some unlucky calls at the Olympics, that's all.
Mathman, you know the way to my heart --- stats!
Anyway a nice set of those you got here. Though I have some differences in my calcualations.
But the overall score difference between Nationals and Olympics was nearly 18 points.
Short program difference = 69.35 (Nationas) vs. 64.64 (Olympics (-4.71 point difference)
TES difference= 33.90 (Nationals) vs. 36.80 (Olympics) (+2.90 point difference)
PCS SP difference = 29.96 (Nationals) vs 27.81 (Olympics) (-2.15 point difference)
GOE= 5.49 (Natinals) vs 2.50 (Olympics) (-2.99 point difference)
Long program difference (using some of MM's stats)
Overall= 130.76 (Nationals) vs 117.85 (Olympics) (-12.91 points)
TES= 69.05 (Nationals) vs 59.37 (Olympics) (-9.68 points)
PCS= 61.71 (Nationalas) vs 58.48 (Olympics) (-3.23 points)
GOE= 6.64 (Nationals) vs. 5.24 (Olympics) (-1.40 points)
I would agree with you MM that the downgrades was what did Rachael in. Her score of 117 is better than her score in Skate America even with the DGs, which tells me the judges would have scored her higher if not for those DGs. Also worth noting that the DGs made up 77 percent of the points she lost between Nationals and the Olympics.
Her SP is actually almost comparable. The main difference is grade of execution. So perhaps the difference of opinon between the national and international judges is how well Rachael completed those elements. So janetfan's points are supported there.