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A new anti-cheating system for counting the judges' scores in ice skating is flawed, according to leading sports specialists. Ice skating's governing body announced the new rules last week after concerns that a judge at the Winter Olympics may have been unfairly influenced.
Initially the judges in the pairs figure--skating event at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City voted 5 to 4 to give the gold medal to a Russian pair, even though they had a fall during their routine. But the International Skating Union suspended the French judge for failing to reveal that she had been put under pressure to Vote for the Russians. The International Olympics Committee then decided to give a second gold to the Canadian runners-up (亚军).
The ISU, skating's governing body, now says it intends to change the rules. In future 14 judges will judge each event, but only 7 of their scores, selected at random, will count, the ISU won't finally approve the new system until it meets in June hut already UK Sport, the British Government's sports body has expressed reservations. "I remain to be convinced that the random selection system would offer the guarantees that everyone concerned with ethical sport is looking for", says Jerry Bingham, UK Sport's head of ethics.
A random system can still be manipulated, says Mark Dixon, a specialist on sports statistics from the Royal Statistical Society in London. "The score of one or two judges who have been bribed may still be in the seven selected."
Many other sports that have judges, including diving, gymnastics, and synchronized swimming have a system that discards the highest and lowest scores. If a judge was under pressure to favor a particular team, they would tend to give it very high scores and mark down the opposition team, so their scores wouldn't count. It works for diving, says Jeff Cook, a member of the international government body's technical committee. "If you remove those at the top and bottom you're left with those in the middle, you're getting a reasonable average."
Since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, diving has tightened up in its system still further. Two separate panels of judges score different rounds of diving during top competitions. Neither panel knows the scores given by the other, "We have done this to head off any suggestion of bias." says Cook.
Bingham urged the ISU to consider other options. "This should involve examining the way in which other sports deal with the problem of adjudicating (裁定) on matter of style and presentation," he says.