>>Has anyone paid attention to this:
>>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&u=/nyt/20020224/ts_nyt/french_judge_says_pressure_was_from_canada
>>
>>Now would someone tell me what's going on here?
>
>All the more reason to either give them all sticks and a puck, or get rid of it as an Olympic medal sport. Just keep it as an exibition so the networks can keep up their female ratings. If it takes a judge to determine a winner it is only an athletic event and not a sport, IMNSHO. This just furthers the point that serious scoring reforms are needed. Go to 14 judges and randomly throw out 7, or go to 11 judges and throw out the highest 2 and lowest 2 scores.

Well then sports with "referees" or "umpires" or similar are certainly questionable too, and most especially so depending on how they are reularly organized and paid, etc.
There were numerous international hockey tournaments in the past where "referees" decided the outcome of a game where Canada was participating.

Given the "refereeing" in the Womens's USA/Canada game, the USA would normally have won hands-down. It was something a little deeper than skill alone that gave the Canadian women the edge they needed for victory. And it does seem that the USA team was sure of their victory before the start, which didn't help their cause.

The solution for sports involving any kind of "call" by a (disinterested) third party is to make it genuinely disinterested. That means things like:
1) removing the possibility that "incentives" (bribery) has much of a chance of acceptance by making them reasonably paid "professionals";
2) let officials' "calls" (scorings or play calls or anything that can have some influence on a final outcome) be reviewed and rated after any game/match/event by both their peers and by other relevant similarly skilled yet unrelated parties (say retiree of the same ilk);
3) Picking from a pool of talent without regard to geographic/social/other constraints or influences, based on #2 above.
4) Picking actual judges/referees/umpires 1 hour before game time from a pool of at least 3 times the number required. This would really be optional and overboard if 1-3 were done well.

I don't think that the idea of scoring 15 and randomly selecting 8 or 9 will do anything to help. My best guess, based on past performance, is that the cheating judges will simply inflate the "desireables' scores more and deflate the undesireables' more too. That way, if theirs do get selected, they at least will feel that they have some influence. This may even lead to mre cheaters rather than less because now some will be able to justify it to themselves on the basis that their scores likely would not be selected as counting anyway.