I interpreted his remarks similarly: since Mima Ito has both a unique playstyle (she's the only high-level short pips player the Japanese women's team has) and has had some unique success in competition against the CNT lately, it's clear (in LGL's view) the Japanese will send her to the Olympics, and as a result some pressure is off of her. Same deal with Harimoto on the men's side. This also affects the team dynamics wrt. the jockeying for position in order to get a ticket, so to speak - nobody needs to be bitter rivals with the players who are shoe-ins, so they can have more of a rah-rah attitude towards them and make them a sort of a nucleus of team spirit.
The Chinese, on the other hand, only really have double-inverted attackers in the running and the skill level gap is very tight among the top players, so it's everybody vs. everybody, which has some downsides.
To me, it's weird to hear LGL talk like that. I've seen video of one of his speeches to the men's team from a year or two ago where he was giving a sort of debriefing after a tournament (I think Marvelous Twelve) telling players they needed to take away somebody else's ticket in order to go themselves, and that he was so disappointed in some of them wrt. a perceived lack of competitive spirit that they should "go play on the B team or the women's team" if they couldn't play with fire. I don't see how you can purposely cultivate a dog-eat-dog environment like that and then sort of decry it. But hey, I'm not the Grand Slam winner who's coached the team to a zillion WTTC, WC and Olympic golds so what do I know
