The recommendation is designed only for major competitions. In Senior Bs they can carry on as always. Given how some of the smaller ones sometimes struggle to get judges, it would have been too difficult to implement and it would have make not much sense anyway to exclude Russian or Japanese callers from a competition with, for example, only French, German and Italian girls taking part.
I agree that in ISU Championships it shouldn't be a problem to make a technical panel without individuals from country with top contenders in that discipline/event. I think they keep the "when possible" just in case that because of coincidences they have many people saying they are not avialable for that particular week.
Pairs is probably the most at risk of that happening because the pool of specialists is more limited but 25 people from 13 countries to choose from should be enough (assuming Russian and French callers are ok at 4CCs and vice-versa).
Actually, I think it is much more difficult to have a technical panel made only of top contenders and covering all top contenders. They are most at risk not to have enough specialists/controllers available if the feds to exclude because they have top contenders are many. And if they are many they can't be filled into into a 4 peoeple panel (including referee).
I also agree that the definition of "reasonably be expected to place 1 – 5 in the respective discipline" can be tricky. I personally would say Gilles/Poirier and Guignard/Fabbri are contenders for the 5th position.
Some of the "special relationship" recommendations were already followed in practice. For example, Margaglio usually only judges in Junior GP or Junior Worlds. Same for Ravi Walia. Lorenzo Magri usually calls only Ladies and Pairs and not Men.
I guess they added the provision of officials alerting them about "special relationships" because ISU had in mind those about "top" skaters/coeaches but they can not get those at lower level. For example, I doubt that when ISU appointed Gusmeroli for Ladies Worlds panel had a clue that she coreographed Nicole Schott's FS program.
