BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 6 : Gutsu Vaults Over Miller in All-Around : Gymnastics: CIS uses her as an injury replacement. Zmeskal goes out of bounds and slips to 10th.

They were leading Shannon Miller around the arena. There were photographers blocking her path and a silver medal dangling from her neck, and the crowd started to call her name.

She was off to drug-testing and another interview and maybe even a brief visit with her parents, who had flown from Edmond, Okla., to be with her on a night that was nearly perfect.

You couldn’t wipe that smile from her face.

A few minutes later, the arena emptying out, Kim Zmeskal walked slowly up this red carpet, led like some punch-weary fighter by her best friend, U.S. teammate Betty Okino. Her coach, Bela Karolyi, had already left the building one step closer to retirement. Zmeskal was crying. She had been a world champion. Yet she was 10th, a gold-medal dream crushed in the blink of an eye.

Thursday night, tiny teen-agers were thrown into a gymnastics pit to decide the all-around women’s title. Three 15-year-olds with ribbons in their hair and steel in their guts emerged with the medals.

Tatiana Gutsu of Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States used a final, near-perfect vault to win the gold with 39.737 points.

Miller, competing with a micro-screw in her left elbow, the last reminder of emergency surgery on April Fool’s Day, received the silver, only .012 from first, 39.737 to 39.725.

And Lavinia Milosovici of Romania won the bronze.

But on this night, you couldn’t help noticing the brief shelf life of a world champion.

Zmeskal, best in the world in 1991, stepped out of bounds in her floor routine and wobbled once again on the balance beam to sink to 10th. Svetlana Boguinskaia of the CIS, the 1988 Olympic bronze medalist who won the 1989 world championship, was hindered by an unspectacular uneven bar routine and was placed fifth.

By the end, the teen-aged former champions, once the fiercest of rivals, were exchanging hugs and kisses.

“I don’t know if this was the best night of my life,” Zmeskal said. “I did the best I could.”

But it wasn’t good enough.

“This wasn’t between me and Kim,” Miller said with the silver medal draped around her neck. “This was just me going out and hitting my routines, and training hard and trying to win the gold.”

Gutsu climbed almost from nowhere to the top. Fourth on the CIS team after the two rounds of team competition, Gutsu landed in the all-around final when her 14-year-old teammate Rozalia Galieva was given an injury du jour. Call it an ankle. Or a leg. But there was no way the CIS would keep its freshest and fiercest gymnast from reaching the final.

“I’m very happy and excited,” Gutsu said, after a historic medal ceremony concluded with the playing of the Ukraine anthem and the unveiling of the republic’s sky blue and yellow flag.

She won with one vault for the gold.

That’s the way you are supposed to decide the women’s all-around title, with a crowd rustling nervously, ready to unfurl flags. With two kids flipping across the arena from event to event, matching scores and wills, putting up numbers that place them ahead of all others.

Gutsu’s mark of 9.950 in the uneven bars, to Miller’s 9.925, would trigger the chase.

“Shannon was first up on that first event,” said Miller’s coach, Steve Nunno. “She didn’t get the score she deserved. If it was that close, then Shannon was the winner.”

Not quite. But close.

They went down to the final vault.

Miller came roaring across the vault runway and nailed a Yurchenko, using a round-off to a back handspring to soar from the board, finally pushing off the horse with a 1 1/2 somersault topped by a full twist.

She scored a 9.975 to move temporarily into first.

“I thought the judges were going to give her a 10,” Nunno said. “Maybe they were holding out for some superhuman being.”

Miller found a spot at the far end of the arena, climbed a chair and stood on her tiptoes, getting a glimpse of the kid from Ukraine. On her first of two vaults, that same Yurchenko, Gutsu got a 9.925, good enough for silver. The crowd waited. Gutsu charged again, touched down like a feather, got her 9.950, got the gold.

Afterward, they rushed the kids in for their interviews. Miller talked of the chipped elbow that kept her from practice for one day in April, of her determination to become a champion, of her first brush with fame.

“I like it,” she said. “I came in tonight to do the best that I could and try to win a gold medal. I’m very proud to bring the silver medal back to the United States.”

Out in the empty arena, the 16-year-old who was destined for gold was crying. Zmeskal had no medal and no bouquet. She was famous for winning one world all-around title. And now that fame was moving on to the shoulders of others, smaller, younger, fresher.

It had been a rough night. By the time she reached the beam, the strain had drained her.

She wobbled twice while executing back somersaults, the second time barely staying on the beam and avoiding a replay of her fall 48 hours earlier.

“It just wasn’t my night,” she said. “Even the routines I hit, the scores weren’t so good. I don’t think I could have won, anyway.”

Gymnastics Medalists

* WOMEN’S ALL-AROUND

GOLD: Tatiana Gutsu (CIS)

SILVER: Shannon Miller (United States)

BRONZE: Lavinia Milosovici (Romania)