Tie = Silver? Huh?

Nastia Liukin scored the same 16.725 on Bars as China's He Kexin. Yet, He was awarded the gold. Liukin was given the silver. What's up with that? Many people were clearly upset with the new rules, thinking that awarding two golds was the proper way to go. That's how it used to be in prior Olympics as recently as the Atlanta Olympics. The IOC, however, didn't like duplicate medals and told the FIG (Federation of International Gymnastics) to work up rules to resolve ties rather than award double medals. Like it or not (and I know at least one OTW gymnast who is outraged), here's how the tie-breaker rules work (as explained by NBC Sports):

New Scoring Scheme: A + B
A complete gymnastics score is now made up of two parts, A and B. The first, the A score, or the start value, is an assigned degree of difficulty.I n this instance, both He and Liukin had the same start value, 7.7. The second part of a score, the B score, is an execution score. Six judges vote. The high and the low are tossed per the rules. That leaves four scores. Those four are averaged. That average becomes the B score. Add the A and B together and you get a complete score. -- In this instance, both He and Liukin got 16.725.

Tiebreakers :
The first tiebreak is the B score. Here both got the same B score, 9.025.
The next tiebreak: the judges drop the next highest deduction. That obviously leaves three judges' scores instead of four -- or to be precise, the marks those three judges gave for deductions. Here, the average of those three judges' deductions for He: .933. For Liukin: .966. -- Liukin had a greater deduction. Thus she was second.

Another way of getting to that math: Take the B scores of the three judges from that second tie-break, add them together. The math for He's remaining three B scores: 9.1, 9.1, 9.0. That equals 27.2. For Liukin: 9.1, 9.0, 9.0. That equals 27.1. Thus she was second.

Is that fair? What do you think?