Conspiracy in the gym! Loose bolts in the vault! The powdered urchins of women's gymnastics went solo yesterday and glittered through a night heavy with drama. Romania, still celebrating their team success, cartwheeled back into the Superdome and took gold, silver and bronze.

Andreea Raducan is the hot new name in her cold and brilliant sport, her country's first all-round Olympic champion since the iconic Nadia Comaneci back in 1976.

But even as their shrewd and unflappable coach, Octavian Belu, raised the little wisp above his shoulder, the International Gymnastics Federation was releasing a statement confirming that the vault had been set at the wrong height. It was, of course, the same vault on which Svetlana Khorkina, the ice-veined star of Russian gymnastics, had foundered, twice thumping the mat in practice before again crashing to her knees on her first descent.

In a sport where one imperceptible wobble can thrust you to oblivion, Khorkina was history. Hissing words and half-teary, she went to her favourite apparatus - they call her "the queen of the bars" - and again fell to earth. Afterwards, in the corridors where cameras gather, her coaches were the picture of animated East European consternation. Even their moustaches shook with indignation.

"She is number one in the gym. She is champion. We are all in shock. The vault was wrong."

Just days ago, Khorkina was a legend incarnate, gymnastic's new star, incandescent and compelling in front of the camera. Age 20, her chance has been erased - by tape measure - and she exited, stormy and haughty to the last. "I do not want to stop. Get lost," she said.

So for the second time in a week, gymnastics bowed to the Romanian "childs", as Belu calls them. "Only one gymnast, Andreea spoke of winning a medal coming here," smiled the multilingual coach.

"Then, just last night, Maria (Olaru) said `I will win a medal'. Then, the strange thing, like a witch, she gave how everyone would finish on the podium. So if you want to play the lottery in Romania . . ."

As Belu spoke, the controversy boiled around him. The coach was too knowing, too able, to allow it fluster him. "With Andreea, what she feels, she shows. And what many of you don't know is that she was first in the championships in Romania and we expected that if she did the same routine here, she had a chance of a medal.

"It is a historic night for us but remember in Atlanta, we also had three on the podium - silver and joint bronze."

But this sweep, this total domination, makes for one of Romania's sweetest nights.

Although reliable rather than flashy, Raducan's closing floor routine, to traditional Irish music, had true charm. It saw her leap-frog above her two team-mates, young Olaru and the retiring veteran Simona Amanar.

Belu promised that his grave-eyed stars would see plenty of "festivities" in the days ahead. The Olympic champions grinned and became giddy kids for an instant.

But there was no getting away from that vault. The responsibility lay with a phantom body, the "technical committee". Who should have measured it, asked the world.

"I don't know, I don't have that information," said Slavia Corn, a regal, blow-dried stick of a woman who didn't blink. It was inconceivable that such an elementary, absurd oversight should play havoc in a world where millimetres make heroines. Once the mistake was realised the judges offered the girls who had vaulted at the incorrect height another go at the end of the contest.

But by then, the dreams of Khorkina, the girl who came to Sydney saying "I want to be recognised from half a mile away", were in tatters.

There have been worse fates in this unforgiving world that is littered with ruination. Twenty years ago, Yelena Mukhina went into the Moscow games as much of a star as Khorkina was yesterday. Two weeks before her hour on the stage, she fell awkwardly in a floor routine and was paralysed from the neck down. She is just one casualty. With any luck, Khorkina will leave this half-lit game of pain and perhaps find that life is more enriching when you have more than a 10-millimetre margin of error.

For the Romanian girls, the million repetitions, the patient obsession, has written them into history. As Raducan says, it is "like a kind of a dream".

And that alone will be enough to suck thousands of other little girls into this pageant ruled by adults. They are tumbling through the air even now.