You know, all of the US teams could have gotten their act together earlier to fight for the third spot. In a way, I think that the pressure of ONLY having two spots is forcing all of the teams to really get their A game together. It's hard to say if these teams really could have gotten it together earlier in the season. Now they are all skating like they have something to prove, and it will make the final selection all the more exciting.
I call bullshit to this line of reasoning.
1) the USFS stacked the deck to get the result they wanted for the Skate to Milano assignment when they made the choice to use an early August Champs Camp simulated comp as the ONLY deciding factor, without even allowing for the possibility of a change to that assignment after the John Nicks IPC.
2) the USFS did this knowing exactly WHY ChanHowe had been off the ice for 4 months - and certainly Spencer's decision to join the Army's WCAP was something they were well aware of and had been in the works since before Nats last winter - it also explains why they were left off the 4CCs team and why they weren't called in for Worlds after Danny showed up in Boston with an injured foot that turned out to be broken.
3) the USFS made this choice also knowing that PlaFern were just back on the ice less than 2 months earlier following Max's rehab from his own surgery.
4) the USFS has not been transparent about the results of their Champs Camp simulated comp - so we don't really have any idea just how close it was between ShiNagy and the other teams in attendance.
5) the USFS stuck to their guns with that Skate to Milano assignment going to ShiNagy even after they were decisively beaten by McBark and ChanHowe at John Nicks - a ChanHowe team who really came back up to speed in the month between Champs Camp and John Nicks.
6) McBark proved, a week after Skate to Milano, that their John Nicks score wasn't a fluke when they still managed to put up a respectable 183+ score at Nebelhorn.
7) ChanHowe then went out and improved their 183 score from John Nicks with a 10 point increase at Trialeti. And PlaFern improved by 10+ points also in the same time frame with their 178+ at Tayside.
One could make a reasonable argument that PlaFern certainly weren't ready by Skate to Milano to necessarily fight for the potential third spot, but there is nothing in the performances we've seen from either McBark or ChanHowe both before and after Skate to Milano that would indicate they weren't capable of winning that spot had they been awarded the assignment had the USFS not decided that the SOLE determination for that spot would be an extremely early simulated competition held under the cover of secrecy. The USFS knew they were hindering the chances of other teams being fully prepared and ready for that single shot they gave them at a point in the season when most teams aren't close to ready. Not even ShiNagy acquitted themselves all that well a week before Champs Camp when they put up a 170.77 at the domestic Glacier Falls NQS - which makes me question even their own preparedness for that baffling Champs Camp simulated comp.