Delurking because I'm trying to figure out Skate Canada's logic in all of this for singles and I have spent way too much time thinking about this.
From the 2023-24 International Selection Guidelines, for Challengers:
- All skaters need to complete a fullsummer competition (no withdrawing after the short), unless a competitive plan has been agreed upon with the High Performance Director
- Since Deanna/Max and Marjorie/Zach were assigned to ACI, I guess they have that competitive plan
- Stephen and Roman were the ones who withdrew after the short for their summer competitions last season, so unlikely they'd get an exemption
- Preference will be given to skaters assigned to a Grand Prix
- Requirements may be waived due to extenuating circumstances
- Score requirements
- Men: 199 Int/213 Domestic
- Women: 155 Int/166 Domestic
So for the singles who are on the Grand Prix and did their full summer competition:
Men: Conrad, Wesley (ACI)
Women: Kaiya (ACI), Sara-Maude
That leaves Maddie, Stephen and Roman who haven't done their full competition yet, and I don't think Maddie is the one they'd be worried about. Maddie and Stephen have Skate Ontario this week, no idea what Roman's doing. I hope his withdrawal from Cranberry Cup was something like his boots broke and nothing more serious than that.
I'm guessing that Nebelhorn will be Conrad and Maddie. Canada won the Fritz-Geiger Memorial Trophy there last season due to being the best performing country, so I think they'll want to send stronger skaters there to repeat that. That's the one I'm most interested in seeing for Canada's entries.
For the non-GP skaters, it looks like one of the later Challengers like Warsaw is where Skate Canada prefers to send them. I think they'll send skaters who meet the requirements like Fiona, Matthew Newnham, Aleksa Rakic and Justine Miclette to that one. The only skater I can think of who got an early Challenger but wasn't on the GP was Lia since she was sent to Finlandia as a senior while competing on the JGP.
That doesn't explain why they couldn't have sent more singles to ACI. Aleksa will be on his fourth summer competition this week, I was hoping that he'd get ACI so that he could go relax on a beach somewhere, he's earned a Challenger at this point. If he had to cover his costs for Glacier Falls and Cranberry Cup, that's got to add up.
Justine had a good free skate at CQE, they need to capitalize on it since she only needs her free skate TES for Worlds. Going into this season, Maddie is the only woman who has the full TES since Gabby didn't meet the free TES last season. They need to be sending out everyone who could possibly get them rather than hoping that nothing happens to Maddie.
It also doesn't explain why most skaters get one Challenger and that's it. If they don't have a GP assignment, they're not going to improve their season's best and not improve their chances of getting a non-host GP assignment. They get up to three Challengers per skater, they have ACI this year. Whatever strategy worked in the past isn't working for singles.
For Caidence and Raine, they're not one of the teams that has a bye to Nationals, they'll have to do the domestic competitions. The Ontario August competition scores count towards qualifying for Ontario sectionals, but they're not competing for Ontario. Not sure what the Saskatchewan procedure since I can't find it, but they do have to meet the Challenge Minimum Score before Skate Canada Challenge, so this will count towards it.
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