You should have done so nine years ago. USFS have been hammering the importance of body of work since their 2014 selections and they never let up.
I'm absolutely elated for Jason, and of course very sad for Ilia. He's clearly going to be a megastar. But he's not there yet.
I do hope USFS reconsiders how they work the tiers. It seemed to leave them in a totally untenable position today. Jason should have finished ahead of Vincent, but Vincent was already a "lock" because of the tier 2 thing, despite his results not really being that much better than Jason's. They boxed themselves into a corner where they were unable to pick a Nathan/Jason/Ilia team because of the tiers.
Another thing to consider is that Ilia had the opportunity to set up a Senior body of work. He and his team could have chosen to nominate as a Senior this year - he might have got the Skate America host pick, he could have done multiple CS events and built scores and results and been able to bring that argument to the table. Ilia and his team chose to stay Junior, and they chose to do that knowing what it meant for the selection criteria.
A lot of people are talking about messages. I personally think it's a very bad message to tell a skater who has spent the last four years being your second-most consistent skater, producing consistent results, with the second-highest World Ranking/Standing, winning medals on the Grand Prix, at ISU Championship events, and doing exactly the job required in helping to retain spots or earn them for the Olympics, who has faithfully and meticulously fulfilled every criteria on the list, that you are suddenly going to disregard them because a new kid suddenly came good once.
As I said. I like Ilia. I think he's got all the makings of a megastar. But right now I have no proof in front of me that he can repeat anything like what he just did ever again. He had a good first JGP. He mucked up the second and mucked up his CS event. He's not there yet.
