At least at my rink, it's mostly the parents as opposed to the coaches that decide that their kids are going to be Olympians. Sometimes I've seen coaches tell parents their kid isn't going to the Olympics, only to see the parent change nothing but coaches to someone more willing to entertain their dreams for their child. My coach (and many others) at my rink encourage less talented but dedicated kids to skate synchro, freestyle, or solo dance and pass their tests with the intention just to have fun or skate in college. One of the girls at my rink I skated with like this ended up becoming a USFS dream skater and winning World synchro medals. Myself and one other girl who skated as a hobby ended up competing collegiate synchro with that encouragement.
From the perspective of someone with coaching experience who's had to deal with coaching politics, I understand why it's hard to get straight answers on training and eventual costs.
- Coaches change prices and they expect the coach you start out with is not the coach you'll compete with if you become elite. They expect that you might get another specialized coach on the side, but they may not know what that coach charges - so they have no way of knowing what the eventual coaching costs are. Some coaches (like Tom Z) probably control all of your training themselves, as I'm sure you know, but this isn't the way all coaches do it, and it's certainly not something discussed until you've decided how far you want to go with skating.
- That being said, I do think it's possible to give a cost estimate based on different paths your skater could take. I would always give parents a good estimate of what skating would cost at different levels. For instance, it's easy to know if they're a top Senior/Junior skater they can easily be paying $30k+/year. Or I knew that synchro for the beginner-level team was about $4-700/year, the middle teams was $1000-2000/year, and the top team was closer to $3000+/year plus one private lesson and two hours of freestyle a week. I would also tell them that collegiate teams could have their skating fully funded or be around $2000 (Open Collegiate) to $5000 (Non-funded Collegiate). Since I never did singles, I would point them to their non-synchro coach to talk about that.
- They also don't know what you plan to do about dresses. While the ones Senior ladies wear cost $1000+, if you can sew (which some parents can) you can make a dress for as low as $150-200. Even if you can't sew, you can pay to get an unrhinestoned stock dress for under $200 and then rhinestone it yourself to make it look more expensive. On eBay you can get sparkly finished dresses for as low at $100. So they have no idea how much you're willing to pay for a dress.
- They don't know how you'll do off ice. While some skaters use their on-ice coach for off ice practice, many others (particularly at rinks with gyms attached) will hire personal trainers to condition them. For lower cost options, some will do off ice at home by doing running, weights, abs, etc. and some just won't do off ice.
- It's sometimes hard to tell potential until much later on. There have been students I thought would be awful, but it turns out they were just bad at crossovers - they excelled at things like turns that they wouldn't learn until later levels. Or some skaters (like myself) are bad at the more traditional disciplines of skating and never had an opportunity to try a discipline that suited my talents better (dance) until much later. There's also some students have we all think have 0 potential, and then work their butts off and end up doing well; on the other hand, there are students we have that have so much potential up through Juv/Intermediate who hit a wall they can never get past.
As for best coaching practices, yeah, that's a lot sketchier. I think a lot of coaches just have different ideas of what is ethical. For the most part I'd say the coaches at my rink are very ethical and ethics-focused.
Except for one coach in particular at my rink that poaches students, lies to parents that they (career ISI coach) are better than National/International USFSA coaches, and try to hide the existance of USFS synchro from their skaters/parents. I remember when the team competed against USFS teams and got dead last how upset the parents were... Because of those lies, some of their skaters think they can do (and want to do) synchro in college, but likely none of them actually can because they have maybe one USFS Moves test by the end of high school. Unfortunately they bring in a lot more business than most USFS coaches because ISI is easier, cheaper, less time-consuming and more fun at competitions than USFS, so they're not barred from coaching at the rink.
CASE CLOSED oh about how many days ago already? That ship left the harbor awhile ago, though the skaters aren't yet boarding the plane to Pyeongchang. And btw, I wasn't in the room where it happened. Neither was Jason Brown, sadly.
but quite obviously it was an inevitable comparison since AG was coached by Mishin. AG also bore a slight physical similarity to Plushy, though of course AG's build, overall looks and skating style were different. If you're going to be compared to the great Plushenko, you might as well embrace it and ride it out as best you can. 
Hopefully, Artur looks back with some fondness and not with regret on those days. Whatever you can't change, try to make peace with. I guess that brings us full circle back to the original topic.
They surely appreciated the opportunity to attend their first Worlds. And absolutely no one held anything against these two young men. Not in the least. It was obvious that they both had performed well indeed. They most definitely deserved better scores. But it had turned out to be a difficult Worlds partly due to the long delay which complicated training preparedness, plus everyone's concern for what had happened in Japan, etc. I know that Ryan was disappointed by US fed's decision because he spoke of feeling Jeremy should be on the team. Clearly, it would have been beneficial for U.S. men's discipline as a whole to send Jeremy, as a recent GP medalist and a veteran well known to ISU judges. In fact, it was a no-brainer, but Jeremy apparently had not been forgiven in some quarters for his less than stellar showing at 2010 Olympics when he was a front-runner for a medal.
