INQUIRER Sports

BEIJING -- Veteran hurdler Angelo Taylor and discus thrower Stephanie Brown-Trafton opened America's track and field gold account on Monday but their gymnasts were undone by a controversial new scoring system.

The 29-year-old Taylor regained the 400-meters hurdles title he won in 2000 to beat home compatriots, world champion Kerron Clement and 2005 world champion Bershawn Jackson.

Lolo Jones, meanwhile, ran the fastest 100m hurdles time in the world this year, winning her semi-final in 12.43 seconds, to set up another US-Jamaican athletics showdown in Tuesday's final.

One night after Jamaican women swept the 100m medals with three Americans behind them, Jones, Damu Cherry and Dawn Harper all went through.

"We're going to go for an American sweep, 1-2-3, and see what happens," said Cherry.

Brown-Trafton was also a winner in the discus with a throw of 64.74m with Cuba's Yarelys Barrios and Olena Antonova of Ukraine taking silver and bronze.

But there will be no gold for 110m hurdler Terrence Trammell whose bid to turn two successive Olympic silvers into gold ended in tears in his first round heat.

The 29-year-old failed to get past the second hurdle because of a left hamstring injury while defending champion Liu Xiang of China also limped away with a foot injury.

China won three of the four gold gymnastic medals on offer, but the US were denied a place on top of the podium under a complicated tiebreak system never before used at the Olympics.

The new scoring system, under which the old "perfect 10" has been replaced with two marks, features one mark out of 10 for execution and another reflecting the difficulty of the routine.

In the uneven bars final, China's He Kexin and America's Nastia Liukin both scored 9.025 for execution and 7.7 for difficulty, to give each a final score of 16.725.

But instead of sharing gold, officials implemented a countback system where the highest and lowest of the five judges marks for execution were progressively removed until a winner emerged.

"I don't know if anybody understands what the hell is going on," Liukin's father and coach Valeri said.

The United States won the team gold medal in the Olympic show jumping competition in Hong Kong after a dramatic jump off with Canada, the first time the medal has been decided by showdown.

The American victory came after both teams finished the competition even on 20 penalty points.

The US NBA stars showed Germany why they are gold medal favorites, dispatching a team led by Dirk Nowitzki 106-57.

Dwight Howard scored 22 points with 18 from Cleveland Cavalier LeBron James.

Balanced scoring by the US was again in evidence as Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant finished with 13 and Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade had 10 each.