NBC paid close to $900 million to broadcast the Beijing Games, and the network can expect to get its money’s worth tonight.

The women’s team gymnastics final, which takes place tomorrow morning in Beijing and will be televised live tonight in America, is always one of the marquee events of the games. But in this year’s Olympics, women’s gymnastics takes on the added significance of pitting an excellent American squad against a host Chinese team that has its best chance ever at winning the gold.

Beating China on its home turf won’t be easy, but the American team showed just how strong it is during the weekend by finishing in second place during the qualification round, despite a series of missteps and unfortunate occurrences.

The most unfortunate was that Samantha Peszek sprained her left ankle in warm-ups. Team USA had planned to have Peszek compete on all four apparatuses, but thanks to the injury she was limited to just the uneven bars during the preliminaries, and she is unlikely to compete at all in the team finals. Chellsie Memmel already had an ankle injury of her own and was also limited to just the uneven bars.

Memmel lost her grip and fell at one point during her uneven bar routine, and Nastia Liukin fell flat on her back during her uneven bar dismount. But their degree of difficulty was high enough that both still provided respectable scores, and the U.S. ended the preliminaries in second place, slightly behind China, with Russia in third and Romania, which won the gold at each of the last two Olympics, in fourth.

Eight teams — the top four plus Australia, France, Brazil, and Japan — qualified for the team final, and the scores are wiped clean and all teams start from scratch when the finals begin. But it is very unlikely that any nation outside those top four will earn a team medal, so this is basically a four-team event. The competition will end with the Chinese, American, Russian, or Romania anthem playing.

For the “Star-Spangled Banner” to play at the Beijing National Indoor Stadium, Shawn Johnson will need a big night. A 16-year-old from Des Moines, Iowa, Johnson is the defending world all-around champion, and she has a chance at winning as many as four gold medals, in the team and individual all-around, plus the balance beam and floor exercise. After floods forced her out of her home this summer, Johnson has the kind of backstory that always makes for good Olympic fodder, and if she is at the top of her game during the next week, she could be poised to emerge from these games as a superstar along the lines of Mary Lou Retton or Kerri Strug.

Johnson led all gymnasts in this weekend’s preliminary events, finishing just ahead of teammate Liukin. Born in Moscow in 1989 to parents who were both world champions in the powerful Soviet gymnastics program, Liukin and her family moved to America when she was a small child, and she has never known a life without gymnastics. Liukin is not as well-rounded as Johnson, but in her best event, the uneven bars, she is virtually flawless.

Or at least, she was flawless until Sunday, when she fell on her dismount on the uneven bars. But even with a loss of 0.8 points for that tumble, Liukin’s routine was so impressive that she still managed a 15.950 on the apparatus, Team USA’s best score.

The injuries to Memmel and Peszek may leave the U.S. with just four gymnasts — Johnson, Liukin, Alicia Sacramone, and Bridget Sloan — to take on the six-woman Chinese team. The team finals consist of three gymnasts from each country competing in all four events, so having only four athletes available wouldn’t make it impossible for Team USA to win. But it would mean there’s not much margin for error.

The Chinese have only medaled in the women’s team competition once, when they took the bronze in 2000. But this year’s team is so strong that the host country has a chance of winning not just the team gold but the individual golds in all four apparatuses, with Cheng Fei a favorite in both the floor exercise and vault, Li Shanshan a favorite in the balance beam, and He Kexin the most likely winner if Liukin stumbles in the uneven bars.

Team USA beat China by a tiny margin (184.400 to 183.450) at last year’s world championships, and the Chinese team has improved since then, especially with the addition of He, who, according to China, turned the Olympic minimum age of 16 this year. Several press reports have suggested that He is actually 14, which would make her ineligible for the games, but the International Olympic Committee is satisfied that China has told the truth about her age.

That controversy aside, women’s gymnastics is shaping up as the best show of these games. For convincing the IOC to schedule the competition at the most convenient hour for television viewers in America, NBC will get a perfect score from the American judges.

Mr. Smith is a writer for FanHouse.com.