I wish Rika the best in her LP. She skated wonderfully in the SP and did a fine job holding onto the landing of the triple axel without falling down. I hope she lands all her jumps successfully in the LP and has a joyous performance and that she gets a chance to let her ankle heal for a long time before returning to training. I believe the process of underscoring the biggest threats like Rika domestically to provide cover for international underscoring so that victory is easier for more favored skaters is a well established tactic in the ISU and the JSF has long shown it may either be forced to go along with this agenda because of a lack of political power or because there may be some kind of quid pro quo for such arrangements. This precedent has already been set because last year Rika was given lower PCS in the Nationals LP than in the Grand Prix Final LP even with a higher tech score and more triple axels and even after winning every competition, while Satoko and Kaori were given a PCS boost above Rika and had more generous tech calls than in the Grand Prix series. Again, here Rika has far higher tech score in the SP yet lower PCS than Satoko or Kaori. However in my view, the intention is not to boost Satoko and Kaori, they do have wonderful performances, but to establish the precedent of deflating the reputational scoring of a formidable challenger at home to make it easier to do so internationally, while more favored skaters receive generous scoring at Nationals that can set the precedent for generous scoring internationally. In my view, acknowledging the manipulation of scores is a way of giving proper credit to Rika for the performances she puts out on the ice, though admittedly she does make mistakes sometimes, instead of second guessing her ability because of systematic underscoring.
but compared to GPF where Rika was downscored even more:
I know enough to know that I know nothing, beyond the fact that Rika is a lovely skater, and I'm looking forward to catching her FP.
