Carpenter and Gorski Upstaged by Canadian

Curt Harnett of Thunder Bay, Canada, upstaged U.S. Olympians Ken Carpenter and Mark Gorski Saturday to win the men’s match sprints in the Sundance Grand Prix of Cycling at the Olympic Velodrome at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Harnett, a former hockey player who originally took up cycling to keep in shape in the summer, defeated Carpenter in the best-of-three final, overtaking the reigning U.S. champion in the final 50 meters of the third race.

Carpenter set the pace in the decisive race, pulling ahead of the Canadian champion with about 1 1/2 laps remaining in the three-lap race.

“I was attacking him from behind, trying to get underneath him and get in front of him with about half a lap to go,” Harnett said of Carpenter, who was eliminated from the competition by Harnett last year at the Seoul Olympics.

Harnett, who will be 24 today, never did get underneath Carpenter, instead passing on the outside as the riders came off the last turn.

“I just had a little bit more than him,” Harnett said.

Gorski, who was beaten by Carpenter in the semifinals, finished fourth, losing in the third-place match to Paul Swift of Kenosha, Wis.

In other finals:

--Connie Paraskevin Young of Indianapolis, a three-time world champion in the event and a bronze medalist last year in the Seoul Olympics, won the women’s match sprints, beating Carpenter’s fiance, Renee Duprel of Bellevue, Wash., in the best-of-three final, 2-0.

--Dan Frost of Denmark, gold medalist in the points race at Seoul, won the men’s individual pursuit, essentially a race against the clock in which the competitors start at opposite ends of the track and attempt to catch one another. Frost, 27, was the only track cycling gold medalist at Seoul who was not from an Eastern-bloc country.

--Madonna Harris of Park City, Utah, who competed last year for her native New Zealand in the women’s road race at Seoul and in cross-country skiing at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, won the women’s pursuit.

--Shaun Wallace of England, a former world-record holder in the flying one-kilometer time trial, won the men’s miss and out, a race of attrition in which the last rider across the line at the end of each lap is eliminated from the competition.

--Swift won the men’s keirin, a six-lap race in which the riders are led around the track for all but the last 400 meters of the competition by a pace vehicle, in this case a motorcycle.

Swift finished about half a bike length in front of Nelson Vails, who was the silver medalist in the match sprints at the 1984 Olympics.

--Duprel won the women’s 10-kilometer points race.

Finishing second in the points race was Janie Eickhoff, 18, of Los Alamitos, who was third in the sprints, third in the pursuit and, on Thursday night, won the miss and out.

More than two hours after the event was completed Friday night, race officials determined that Frost, who won the event at a longer distance at Seoul, was the winner of the 30-kilometer men’s point race.