So easy and useless to play shoulda/coulda/woulda now, but maybe sending Rika to Challenge Cup wasn't the best idea. I don't know how much return she really got for skating in the last group for the SP. Then again, I thought the same for Elizabet going to Universiade and that seemed to only help her momentum.
I don't honestly know although having seen the PCS they awarded her for being in the second to the last group, I feel like the results would have been the same either way.