Round 3, highlights and lowlights

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What fun. Overall leader Shawn Johnson and her top competition Nastia Liukin performed one after another on the balance beam. Johnson landed her turns and back-to-back-to-back flips with confident soundness with only a step on her dismount to quibble about. She scored 16.300. In a completely different style, Liukin landed long-legged tumbling passes with airy lightness, even on her dismount. She scored 16.250. The difference was in the difficulty. Johnson had a start value of 6.9 and Liukin 6.6....Mattie Larson looked past her poorly-performed uneven bars routine from Thursday and twirled fast, pointed her toes well, held on to all her release moves and moved from a score of 14.200 to 15.250 on an event that the U.S. is a little short on strong performers.

A bit of a downer was Alicia Sacramone’s first vault. Vault is one of her specialties, but she landed so short her head almost hit the vaulting table.

-- Diane Pucin