- Joined
- Aug 18, 2010
It is hard to know what the prededent is. In 2001-02 Matt Savoie won the bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final, but finished fourth at U.S. Nationals. The top three at Nationals were Eldredge, Goebel and Weiss. These three went to the Olympics. (IMHO Savoie deserved placement at Nationals ahead of Weiss, but that's another story. )
Eldredge decided not to go to Worlds that year, so Savoie went to Worlds with the other two.
Other than that, every U.S. skater/dance team who ever medaled at the Grand Prix final handily made the podium at Nationals as well, so there was no controversy. For instance, in ladies, the former Grand Prix Finals winners for the U.S. were Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, and Sasha Cohen.
Here the PCS has gotten the use of it. (In 2001-02 it was the presentation mark.) It's easy to switch third and fourth or second and third by giving different PCS. It's all in the PCS. The difference between now and then was, now the judges have less control of the outcome. Therefore, they have to give out larger margin in order to make the desired outcome. Which has resulted in the huge, outragous PCS. Often, the winner, even the rightful winner of a competition was also having unexplainable inflated PCS scores.