My interpretation of what Mark said was that the only times the committee deviated from National results in the past was in the case of a medal favorite. That's not very specific about the criteria, but it is certainly a historic fact.
We can agree that the committee made the decision it felt best - I'm sure they tried to faithfully evaluate according to the criteria. It was not an easy decision.
I'm not ascribing anything poor about the committee - it's more the criteria.
I don't disagree with what you said about Ross "trend v. fluke" but the same can be said of Adam. We don't know if his poor performance was a fluke or the sign of a downward trend. One of the things that we can say though, is that when the pressure was on to deliver at the most important competition, the one that has traditionally been used to select the Olympic team... Ross delivered and Adam didn't. Or at least Ross delivered more, according to the scores.
Yeah I don’t disagree.
I think the only other thing I’d point out about Adam v Ross: Adam was under pressure to deliver here in a way that Ross was not. Adam was
expected to make the team by pretty much everyone, and he increased the pressure on himself by making public statements. Ross was under no external pressure at all - no one really expected him to make the team, and in fact, you could argue that he decreased the pressure of expectations by his placements during the fall. I think that makes a huge difference in how you evaluate their performances.
You can see something similar in 2014 - like Ross this year, Jason brought down the house in 2014, and Adam totally blew it. But Jason was under far less pressure than Adam, because everyone expected Adam to make the 2014 team. Jason was in the mix, but I think being 19 without a quad, and a first year senior to boot, he didn’t take it too seriously.
But this year, Jason, like Adam, had both internal and external expectations. You could argue that Jason’s were greater than Adam’s, because Jason is already an Olympian. Unfortunately, Jason didn’t handle the pressure very well. Adam wasn’t perfect, but he was better than Jason, and better than he himself was in 2014. The biggest difference between 2014 Jason and 2018 Ross was that Jason did much better in his three fall assignments.
That’s really my long winded way of saying that in order to evaluate how well Ross and Adam delivered at Nats, the context is important.
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