I am an employee of VANOC, I am on the front lines and I will explain this as best as I can, and hopefully I can shed some light on how an inexperienced slider can "make" it to the Olympics. A country is allotted a certain number of slots to bring atheletes to the sport. I will use skiing as an example, since it is what I am working with full time. Countries are alloted a certain number of spots with how they are doing on the World Cup, in the case of skiing the last World Cup was the last weekend in January, and it was after that event that the Canadian Team was set. Individuals earn FIS points for individual results as well as there are team FIS points as well.
A person can earn FIS points both in World Cup, and in Regional contests. Teams coming Vancuver 2010 were just given a nmber of "spots' Canada as a host nation was actually given a bonus slots for athletes. The only qualifying state was a certain number of FIS points, not how they earned.
In the case of the Georgian athelete, he had only raced in 5 World Cup events (all in Europe where the tracks are older, less challenging and slower) in his career, and has apparently never raced at either of the North American tracks (Lake Placid and Whistler) and at the point of the training camps in the summer was not brought to Whistler as part of the Georgian team.