The Grand Prix assignments are indeed made skater by skater, not country by country.
Only Grand Prix host countries have the opportunity to invite unranked skaters at the end of the seeding process.
A non-host country has no other way to get their promising skaters into the the GP in the first place except by sending them to other competitions so they can make a name for themselves, and with this system to earn a ranking that gives them the right to at least one GP spot.
Here are the latest seeding rules:
http://www.isu.org/vsite/vnavsite/page/directory/0,10853,4844-136494-137802-nav-list,00.html (Grand Prix announcement PDF at the bottom of the page; here's the direct link:
http://www.isu.org/vsite/vfile/page/fileurl/0,11040,4844-166394-183612-89700-0-file,00.pdf
Scroll down to section 2.2, esp. paragraph c), for how this affects skaters like McCorkell, or Poykio before she made it into the top 10.
What do you expect from the title "World Standings"? If you just expect the results of the last world championships, it's easy enough to look that up directly, but it won't include skaters who didn't get to participate at Worlds for whatever reason.
The stated objectives of the world standings that include all qualified international events are:
To me, knowing what they use it for and don't use it for (personally I think they should also use it for seeding qual rounds at Worlds and Junior Worlds), that tells me that the standings are going to combine results from many competitions to allow ranking of skaters who didn't compete against each other directly.
We might not like the specific numerical weighting of the different kinds of competitions (junior vs. senior, Grand Prix vs. B events vs. championships, last year vs. this year) and the rankings they produce, in which case we might not agree that the actual results produced are "acceptable."
If most of the member federations dislike the weighting strongly enough, they'll change the weighting. But at least it's a lot clearer why skaters are ranked as they are and a lot fairer means of distributing GP assignments than what they were doing a few years ago, which was more political and subjective.
But if you expect the rankings to take into account where skaters who didn't compete as much would have placed if they had done so, that would just be speculative and subjective again.
Only Grand Prix host countries have the opportunity to invite unranked skaters at the end of the seeding process.
A non-host country has no other way to get their promising skaters into the the GP in the first place except by sending them to other competitions so they can make a name for themselves, and with this system to earn a ranking that gives them the right to at least one GP spot.
Here are the latest seeding rules:
http://www.isu.org/vsite/vnavsite/page/directory/0,10853,4844-136494-137802-nav-list,00.html (Grand Prix announcement PDF at the bottom of the page; here's the direct link:
http://www.isu.org/vsite/vfile/page/fileurl/0,11040,4844-166394-183612-89700-0-file,00.pdf
Scroll down to section 2.2, esp. paragraph c), for how this affects skaters like McCorkell, or Poykio before she made it into the top 10.
But once again, IMO the title of the list is a bit misleading.
What do you expect from the title "World Standings"? If you just expect the results of the last world championships, it's easy enough to look that up directly, but it won't include skaters who didn't get to participate at Worlds for whatever reason.
The stated objectives of the world standings that include all qualified international events are:
1. OBJECTIVES
1.1 To present to the public at large and the media, an acceptable and accountable standings system of all skaters in figure skating in a particular season.
1.2 To guarantee objectivity and a process for selection of individual entries to the various ISU events. To provide an acceptable explanation for athletes not accepted for entry.
1.3 To provide athletes with a competitive explanation vis a vis their standings with fellow athletes.
To me, knowing what they use it for and don't use it for (personally I think they should also use it for seeding qual rounds at Worlds and Junior Worlds), that tells me that the standings are going to combine results from many competitions to allow ranking of skaters who didn't compete against each other directly.
We might not like the specific numerical weighting of the different kinds of competitions (junior vs. senior, Grand Prix vs. B events vs. championships, last year vs. this year) and the rankings they produce, in which case we might not agree that the actual results produced are "acceptable."
If most of the member federations dislike the weighting strongly enough, they'll change the weighting. But at least it's a lot clearer why skaters are ranked as they are and a lot fairer means of distributing GP assignments than what they were doing a few years ago, which was more political and subjective.
But if you expect the rankings to take into account where skaters who didn't compete as much would have placed if they had done so, that would just be speculative and subjective again.