We wrecked our own figure skaters?

This piece by Tara Lipinski says that US women figure skaters aren’t as competitive because the US rules below senior level encourage ‘clean’ rather than ‘difficult’ programs and the senior level operates the other way round. How the bleep does this happen? It seems like a fairly obvious consequence: if you value ‘clean’ over ‘technical’ you get clean and not as technical because people need to win at the junior level and then they fail at the senior level. I love how Tara points out her strategy to beat Michelle Kwan was to out-technical her and that she became the first woman to land a triple in competition. So the people who run skating blew it.