BEIJING — Of all the strokes, sprints, holds and jabs of these Beijing Games, few, if any, have been more enchanting to watch than Nastia Liukin's uneven bars routine.

This is a young champion doing her most spectacular work. The three one-armed spins, the pirouettes to each side, the release move where she seems suspended in mid-air and then catches the high bar again, and finally her double-flip dismount seem more like a Cirque du Soleil number than a gym routine.

I don't know what it is, therefore, that Helen Colagiuri is watching. She's missed one of the great individual performances of the Olympics.

The tiebreaker rules of FIG, gymnastics' world governing body, may have cost Liukin a deserved gold medal Monday. But it was Colagiuri, a judge from Australia, whose warped scoring altered the final outcome.

Where is NBC, screaming bloody thievery, on this one?

The computerized scoreboard at the Beijing National Indoor Stadium, as it turned out, immediately got it right. China's pint-sized He Kexin performed first on the uneven bars Monday, misstepped on her dismount, and was awarded a score of 16.725.

Liukin went next and performed a stunning routine. She would concede later that she had trouble with her Pak salto, a move where she releases the high bar, flips backward and catches the lower bar. The move is supposed to appear effortless; Nastia labored through it.

Her father and coach, Valeri, had told her before the routine to "do the best you can and try to stick the dismount."

Nastia obeyed.

"Hey, at least I stuck the dismount for you," she told him when they hugged.

And so, she accepted her fate, she said, when she looked at the scoreboard and saw that it listed her in second place.

It wasn't until at least two or three gymnasts later that Liukin said she noticed that she was given the same score, 16.725, as He but was still listed second.

"I kept looking at the scores and I thought, 'I know I'm tired, but ... "' Liukin said.

There are six tiebreaker rules that are designed to break deadlocks for places on bars, beam and floor exercise. The second tiebreaker — "average of the three lowest of the four counting B-jury deductions" — decided Monday's gold medal.

I suggested a better tiebreaker — birth certificates — but no one seemed to be listening.

Two groups of judges evaluate a gymnast's performance. A two-member "A" panel calculates the point value of the routine. A six-judge "B" panel determines how much should be deducted based upon the performance of the routine.

He ended up with the gold medal, Liukin the silver and China's Yang Yelin was awarded the bronze.

Was it fair?

"I play by the rules, so I have to say yes," Liukin said. "The Chinese girl did an excellent routine.

"Actually, I thought, the girl that was third was underscored."

Nastia was right. But even though the Cold War has thawed and old party lines have faded, gymnastics is still a sport that's judged by human hands, not stopwatches.

Colaguiri, for some reason, awarded He a 9.3 score. Liukin and the Ukraine's Anastasila Koval were given Colagiuri's next-highest score, 9.0.

The 0.3 difference was the widest given by any of the six judges to the first six gymnasts.

The Liukins, coach and daughter, didn't complain. But Valeri thought it was curious.

"At worlds the same thing, same country, maybe different judge," he said.

"She gave me the lowest score in the all-around, too," Nastia added. "But scoring is scoring. We just have to accept that.

"Listen, I have nothing against anyone in Australia. I don't want to start anything. I'm just kind of stating the facts."

In fact, said the Olympic all-around champ, "As soon as I leave this arena, I'm going to forget about this."

She said she is "exhausted" by the whirlwind week. Liukin still has one more individual event Tuesday, the balance beam, where she is the reigning world champion.

She has four medals, equaling the total won by her father when he was an Olympic gymnast in the Soviet Union. One more medal would also tie Liukin with Shannon Miller for the most medals won by a U.S. gymnast at a single Olympic Games.

With all fairness to Miller, however, Liukin has already eclipsed her, based simply on artistic merit — wow appeal. She has established herself as the United States' female star of these Beijing Games, thoughtfully endearing herself to the world's media in the process.

Regardless of what happens in the balance beam, Nastia Liukin has turned in one of gymnastics' most memorable performances at this Olympics.

Too bad Helen Colagiuri wasn't paying more attention.