The battle of the superpowers was how many American news organisations described it. There were six other countries contesting the women’s team gymnastics event in the Beijing Olympics last week, but the way it was billed, it may just as well have been a head-to-head — USA versus China.

Why was it so important? To Americans, the high point of the winter Olympics is the figure skating and in the summer Games, it is the gymnastics. And in both, the girls’ events have long been more important than the boys.

Indeed, when NBC, the American broadcaster here, was cutting its deal to pay for the TV rights, one stipulation was that two sports — swimming and gymnastics — should be dragged into the early Beijing morning so that viewers on the American East Coast could watch it prime time.

So this was the one that America wanted, and the team gymnastics event was more important than the individual because it was a stronger expression of national strength. And when we add to that the fact that China had won the women’s team event at the 2006 World Championships with the US placed second, and that those positions had been reversed the following year, the perception of the rivalry grew.

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Then throw in more background: China’s unwritten but open ambition for these Olympics was to edge past the US for the first time to the top of the medal table. And add the other undeniable element, the fact that China is the other end of the world, geographically and politically - and we have one single gold-medal event that embodied the subtext to the entire Olympics. Never, since the end of the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet Union had the United States had another rivalry in sport that came with such global overtones.

So Wednesday last week was big, and it came with the extra whiff of scandal. The New York Times had published stories in June claiming that some of the girls in China’s gymnastic team were under the competing age limit of 16 — set because smaller girls can execute tighter spins and neater routines.

But when the international sports bodies ignored the paper’s evidence, American indignation ran even deeper. We now know that China won this battle of the superpowers. We also know that they made their real gains on the uneven bars, when the three girls they fielded happened to be the three whose ages had been called to question.

The Americans did not take defeat well. Afterwards, Martha Karolyi, the US coach, openly questioned the girls’ ages.

Later, in the press conference, a pointed question was posed to He Kexin, whose official documents say she turned 16 on New Year’s Day. “How did you celebrate your 15th birthday?” she was asked. Her answer was that she spent it with her team, but the implication that she had not yet celebrated her 16th could hardly have been clearer.