BEIJING—Nastia Liukin couldn’t have lost a second Olympic gold medal in a closer or more convoluted manner.

The Beijing Games all-around champion from the United States received the same 16.725 score as China’s He Kexin on uneven bars Sunday night. Because dual medals no longer are awarded in gymnastics, a tiebreaker was used. And that tiebreaker was so complex that long after the medals were handed out, International Gymnastics Federation officials still were explaining it.

Suffice to say because of the deductions from a perfect 10 for each gymnast in their execution scores, He had gold and Liukin had her second silver and fourth overall medal of these games.

“For me, it’s not correct,” said FIG president Bruno Grandi, who noted the rules for dual medals were dropped in 1997 at the direction of the IOC. “When two people arrive on the same level, they are champions. But this competition doesn’t belong to us. It is the IOC’s.

“I believe it’s correct to have two gold medals, but this is my modest opinion. The IOC is different.”

Liukin would not criticize the scoring system.

“It’s nothing I can control, and honestly, I can say it has been very fair to me, and I got the biggest gold medal of them all,” Liukin said.

She doesn’t have the latest one, but her four medals tie her father Valeri’s haul when he competed for the Soviet Union. Coincidentally, one of Valeri Liukin’s golds, on high bar in 1988, came in a tie with teammate Vladimir Artemov.

“I tied in my Olympics,” he said with a shrug. “There were people that tied in the all-around back when I was competing. I guess they don’t want that now.”

Oddly, there also was a deadlock for the men’s vault gold, which went to Poland’s Leszek Blanik over France’s Thomas Bouhail.

Blanik’s 16.6 on the first vault was the highest of the four total attempts by the two gymnasts, giving him the gold.