About petitioning for an Olympic or world spot, there has been a steady progression over at least two decades in the criteria. The wording used to be, "In the case of a
dominant athlete who misses I.S. National;ls due to injury..." "Dominant" back then was interpreted to mean something along the lines of. likely to win any given national or international event and to crush all opposition. If you missed nationals for any reason, you better be Michelle Kwan, or at ;least Todd Eldrege.
With every new revision of the rules, the USFSA has moved farther and farther away from, "first, second, third" at nationals s get the world spots" and toward (to quote the current USFSA document):
"From the pool of eligible athletes/teams..., the respective International Committee Discipline Subcommittee will select the World Team plus up to three substitute athletes/teams in a ranked order.
The purpose of the process is to select the athletes who will have the best chance for success at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships to win the maximum number of medals and future berths for the World Team the following season."
And
"It has been the experience of U.S. Figure Skating that the athletes who have had success at the international level are those who have demonstrated consistent performances as opposed to the athletes who have only a single great performance [[for example, at U.S. Nationals]]. Therefore, by not having the selection process based solely on one event, U.S. Figure Skating can select the best athletes to represent the United States at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships. In addition,
if there is an injury or illness that would prevent a dominant athlete from competing at one of the events listed in section 1.2, the petition process allows U.S. Figure Skating to consider for selection all the best representatives for the ISU World Figure Skating Championships."
In other words, if the SelectionSubcommittee thinks that, all things considered, Jason has the best chance, along with Ilia, of bringing home the bacon, that's that. The criticism of this method is that it depends entirely on closed door subjective evaluation. (Not that the members of the se;ectio subcommittees are secret, but I bet you can't name any of them.

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