But even in the olden days of skating, triple-triples, and even triples, were not "consistent" jumps. There was a time period in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, where they wouldn't give underrotations if they thought a skater didn't do a full triple -- they'd give a full downgrade.
Yes, because the ISU hadn't come up with the idea yet of splitting the difference to moderately penalize moderate underrotations. They only had rules to cover clean or 90+ degrees short.
And the very first year of IJS, they didn't even have the < symbol but called the downgraded triples as doubles in the protocols, which wasn't very informative. Same for calling underrotated quads as triples, which led to Zayak issues, which is what prompted the invention of the < notation.
But it was another 4 or 5 years before they decided to distinguish between < and <<.
Also, in general, I don't think triples can ever be considered guaranteed, safe jumps, even for skaters in their prime
Very true!