Sweet lady, but extremely forgettable competitive programs so whether she comes back or not, she won't be missed by me. The 2010-2011 SP was the only really lovely program by her.
If she does come back, she would have to win Japanese Nationals, I think, for the JSF to get really behind her (i.e. Mao would have to be struggling and she would have to beat her.)
If not, then even if she makes it onto the Olympic team for Sochi, Mao and Carolina would have to make major errors compared to a clean Miki for Miki to beat them for a podium spot. YuNa is likely to get on that podium in some way, regardless.
I don't usually go with ulterior motives/conspiracy theory-type stories, but here goes anyway because it's just honestly the way I see it.
The reason is because the Olympics are "special", and they seem to prefer to "spread the wealth" when it comes to the podium placements and the diversity of the athletes' nationalities when they are at similar levels. For instance, when two US ladies were on the podiums in 1998 and 2002, the reason was because they clearly did have the best abilities/performances/reputations compared to the other contenders.
Otherwise, the judges really seem to like to make clear demarcations when there is a frontrunner from, say, a strong team like Team Japan with multiple contenders. In 2006, Fumie Suguri was the National Champ but the judges put Arakawa way ahead and the scores in the SP were very closely clustered for Arakawa, Slutskaya, and Cohen with a clear gap separating them from the others. As I recall, Fumie Suguri skated well through the SP+LP but the gap was very large which made me :scratch: at the time. I quite enjoyed her SP. So, personally, to me, it seemed like they wanted 1 Japan, 1 US (a hyped favourite for an Olympic medal) and 1 Russia (the other hyped favourite for an Olympic medal). They didn't seem to want 2 medium-rep Japanese ladies close to getting 2 podium spots.
In 2010, despite Ando being a former World Champ, and maybe she didn't have a great SP either, but she didn't make too many visible errors and aside from one < call on her combination she did alright. Well, look again - the separation from the top 3 vs. the rest of the field is LARGE: 78.50 (Kim), 73.78 (Asada) [no surprises here], 71.36 (Rochette) then... Ando sitting at 64.76 and the rest is fairly evenly spread out. 4th-11th the difference is 64.76 to 61.02 (Suzuki).
Mirai had to have the skate of her life in the LP and a very loooong deliberation from the judges to land in 4th place. To me, it's a sign that the judges wanted it YuNa-Mao-Joannie (KOR JPN CAN). If Joannie bombed, they might have been forced to do YuNa-Mao-Mirai (KOR JPN USA).
Oh, and let's not forget Laura Lepisto with 5 triples in the LP beat out Miki Ando with 6 triple LP. The same kind of Ando LP that in 2011 got miraculously high PC scores for ridiculous non-choreography by Morozov. In short, I feel that they suppressed Miki Ando at the Olympics when her chances weren't suppressed before or after the Olympic Games. Because when you're not a clear whopping co-favourite with another fellow country(wo)man, they're going to want diversity of nationalities on the podium. And Mao is the bigger star, better skater from Japan. If Mao's doing decently well, and YuNa and Carolina aren't bombing, Miki Ando, Kanako Murakami, or Akiko Suzuki are not going to be anywhere close to the Sochi podium.
Yep, that's my take on my observations.
But yes, it's way too ambitious to consider Osmond for the podium. Definitely a dark horse if the top skaters falter. Top 5 would be an excellent result for her, and clearly with her SP she's capable of hanging with the big guns (and will have better PCS next season).
