BEIJING — A headache-inducing tiebreaker determined Monday that China's He Kexin was the gold medalist on the uneven bars.

Never mind that Nastia Liukin scored the same as He, 16.725.

The Texan took home the silver, her fourth medal of the Beijing Games.

This is gymnastics, this is the Olympics — politics and the inevitable "the fix is in" theories aside — and this is how things are done. China's Yang Yilin took the bronze.

"Scoring is scoring and, unfortunately, that's our sport," said Liukin, who smiled wryly during the medal ceremony. "In other sports, like track and field, it's all timed, and it doesn't have anything to do with the judges.

"I'm a little disappointed just knowing . . . I had the same exact score, and that's what makes it a little harder to take."

Liukin — who won the all-around gold Friday, the best medal of them all, Nastia's father and coach, Valeri Liukin reminded her — still tied her dad's medal haul from 20 years ago. She can earn her fifth medal on Tuesday on the balance beam, and in doing so tie Shannon Miller's American record for most gymnastics medals won in a single Olympics.

But the focus Monday at the National Indoor Stadium was on figuring out what in the heck had happened.

He and Liukin, the first two to compete, each earned the same huge score. Each had a staggering difficulty value of 7.7 and an execution score of 9.025.

But He was immediately ranked No. 1 and Liukin No. 2.

According to the tiebreaker, which went two levels deep, Liukin averaged .033 more deductions than He on three of the six judges' scorecards.

Got that?

"I just hope they know what they're doing," Valeri Liukin said later.

The rules were followed correctly. Butany scoring system that allows a gymnast to land one of two vaults on her knees and still medal — as China's Cheng Fei did Sunday — has issues.

He was already in the middle of a controversy, with news reports questioning whether she and two teammates are old enough to compete in the Olympics.

Nastia Liukin, who placed second — somewhat controversially — on the bars in the last two world championships, and her dad did not immediately recognize the scenario Monday night.

Liukin initially only noticed that she ranked No. 2.

"I kept looking at the scores," she said. "I didn't say anything to my dad at first. I was just like, 'Am I that tired?' I know it's been a long week.

"We started getting confused. There were still a few more people to go. We didn't want to hype things up when we didn't even know if we had a medal at that point."

Liukin said it wasn't until she paraded off the floor before the medal ceremony that Martha Karolyi, the U.S. national team coordinator, explained the tiebreaker to her.

Bruno Grandi, president of the International Gymnastics Federation, said he would prefer double gold be awarded, but the rules that allowed that practice were changed at the behest of the International Olympic Committee after the 1996 Atlanta Games. The tiebreaker had been used in the Olympics since, including other events in Beijing.

He is tiny and quick, and her acrobatic skills have earned her the nickname "The Princess of Crazy Uneven Bars." In one sequence, she threw herself off the bar into the air and barely caught the bar for a second before throwing herself back up again. She took a step on her landing.

Liukin's routine showcases her perfect lines and a sequence of three one-armed pirouettes. Liukin stuck her landing, which had given her trouble. But she said she had a slight error on a skill in which she appears to float from the high to the low bar.

The Australian judge scored He's execution three-tenths of a point better than Liukin's. None of the other five judges scored He more than a tenth better than Liukin. Two judges scored Liukin's execution two-tenths better than He's.

Valeri Liukin, who tied for gold on the high bar in the 1988 Seoul Games, said this isn't the first time Australian judges have scored Nastia low, then declined to elaborate.

Subjectivity, after all, and the tiebreaker rules are part of the sport, easy to digest or not.

"I have one more chance," Nastia Liukin said, "and I'm hoping to get that gold that I feel I missed out a little bit on today."