WORLD GYMNASTICS CHAMPIONSHIPS - Above all the rest - The U.S. team wins gold by a very slim margin over defending world champion China, after a couple of missteps on beam give way to clutch performances in final floor exercise event.

"Now we won it away from home," U.S. team coordinator Martha Karolyi shouted Wednesday afternoon at the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle.

For only the second time at the world championships, the Americans put team gold medals around their necks and raised their voices to shout, "USA, USA."

The U.S. beat defending world champion China by the slim margin of 184.400 to 183.450. Romania was a distant third with 178.100 and was thankful, because the bronze medal became theirs when Russia's Ekaterina Kramarenko inexplicably balked on the vault by running up to the springboard, screeching to a stop and walking away to earn a score of zero.

Kramarenko's tears had almost been matched 10 minutes earlier by the U.S. team. So difficult is it for U.S. gymnastics teams to win gold medals that disappointment seemed inevitable when its lead floated away on the slippery foot of Nastia Liukin and the shaky legs of Shawn Johnson.

As 17-year-old Liukin stepped out of her final tumbling pass on the balance beam, she lost her foot grip and turned a double twisting dismount into something stunningly simple, a half flip. Up next, Johnson, a 15-year-old who usually has exuberant poise, followed with a jarring fall off the four-inch-wide piece of wood.

With Liukin in tears and Johnson's rosy cheeks turned white, the U.S. women marched to their final event, floor exercise, in second place behind China. Alicia Sacramone gathered her teammates and gave them a pep talk. "I just told them we could do it," Sacramone said.

Even after the meet, Liukin said she didn't know what happened.

"My foot kind of slipped," she said. "I did a good beam routine and I guess I just got too excited too early. When I felt my foot slip I knew I wasn't going to be able to complete the twist."

A year ago in Denmark, the U.S. also had been the best team in qualifying only to commit uncharacteristic errors on medal day. "It was such a bad feeling last year," Sacramone said, "just giving stuff away."

It was Johnson, a high school sophomore, who did the calculations after the disastrous beam routines. "The little math whiz," said Sacramone, who is going to be a sophomore at Brown University next week. "She figured out we were only a tenth of a point behind."