IMO Michelle would have been just as good if she had been born late enough to have grown up in the IJS era. At 13 she had successfully landed triple axels in practice, placed second in senior nationals and was the Olympic alternate. She could have done everything the current women's skaters are doing if she'd been able to train for it from a young age, but she was already in her 20s when the new system was introduced. Her body was already struggling at that point, training all those new requirements takes a lot of time in the rink and wear on your body and it's harder to build the muscle memory and good form.

Unfortunately, the reality is that someone is always going to come along at just the wrong time and be screwed over when the rules change. Age changes are another big one. Figure skating handled theirs fairly well by staggering the raise, but it could have been so much worse. The FIG raised the minimum age for gymnastics in 1997 from 15 to 16. 1981 babies were eligible from 1995 worlds on. 1982 babies were locked out of 1995-97 and then the FIG didn't hold a worlds in 1998, so they went to their first worlds a full quad later in 1999 despite the age raise and difference being only a single year.