WORLD SPORTS SCENE : 10-Year-Old Might Meet Her Match on TV

Television talk show host David Letterman wants to take a shot at a 10-year-old girl.

Her name is Natasha Dennis, the goalkeeper for an under-12 girls’ soccer team in Lewisville, Tex., who received worldwide attention when two fathers of children from another team wanted to check her gender. She said someone should check between their ears. Touche.

Now, Letterman would like to put her in goal on his show and see whether she’s a match for him.

Calling her with advice last week was the goalkeeper for the U.S. national team, Tony Meola, who is playing this season for Watford in the English League.

“I just wanted to encourage her,” he said by telephone from England. “It’s her generation that’s going to help make soccer popular in the United States, and I didn’t want her to be discouraged by an unfortunate situation.”

Also participating in the call to Natasha was John Harkes, a midfielder for the U.S. team who plays for Sheffield Wednesday in the English League. The call was arranged by Harkes’ agent, Shelli Azoff of Beverly Hills. Meola and Harkes were teammates on junior teams in New Jersey.

“I told Natasha about a girl who played on one of our teams,” Meola said. “There was a lot of controversy because she was the only girl in the league. There were no teams then for girls. But she stuck with the sport and became an All-American at Rutgers.”

Meola wouldn’t reveal the advice that he gave to Dennis about defending against Letterman.

“It’s a secret,” he said.

The announcement last week that Du Pont has bailed out the professional cycling race on the East Coast that formerly was known as the Tour de Trump by signing a three-year sponsorship agreement was not good news in Spain.

The May 9-19 Tour Du Pont will coincide with the final 11 days of the Tour of Spain. That race has been considered the third most prestigious behind the Tour de France and the Tour of Italy.

But Michael Plant, executive director of the Du Pont race, said that he has heard from a number of top teams that are considering competing in the United States instead of Spain despite a significant difference in prize money.

“I think the Spanish are very intimidated by what we’re doing,” he said.

In its third year, the U.S. race already has the fourth-largest purse, with cash and merchandise prizes equal to $250,000. Spain offers $450,000. But Plant said cyclists prefer to race in the United States because of the amenities.

“Would you rather come here and stay in first-class hotels every night or go to Spain and sleep in gyms?” said the U.S. race’s publicist, Steve Brunner.

Plant, a former speedskater who serves as chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athletes Advisory Council, recently returned from a one-day visit to Cuba with two other former U.S. athletes, swimmer Mary T. Meagher and weightlifter Bruce Wilhelm.

Like a seven-member group from the Canadian Olympic Assn. that also recently toured Cuba, Plant said that he and his two companions were satisfied with the Cubans’ preparations for next summer’s Pan American Games in Havana and Santiago.

He said that he will deliver a positive report to the U.S. sports federations, which will meet in Chicago on Dec. 1 to discuss the situation. Anticipating substandard living and playing conditions, officials in some sports have indicated reluctance to send athletes to Cuba.

“Based on what we saw, there is no reason for the USOC to take a position of not going to the Pan American Games,” Plant said. “If some individual sports decide not to go, that’s their decision. But I don’t think there’s any legitimate excuse.”

The USOC’s unprecedented decision to suspend funding to one of its governing bodies, the Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, could cost the federation as much as $400,000, about half its annual budget.

In its investigation into alleged financial improprieties, the USOC learned from one member of the federation’s board of directors, John Miller, that there has been no detailed treasurer’s report for years. Miller told the Associated Press that former treasurer Jean Chaintreuil once stood before an annual meeting and read from a piece of crumpled paper that he had pulled from his pocket.

“That was the report,” Miller said.

Notes

The British Amateur Athletic Board is campaigning to have athletes who test positive for anabolic steroids suspended for four years. “It only seems like yesterday since (Ben) Johnson got banned, and he will return to competition amid a lot of hype,” said Tony Ward, spokesman for the BAAB. He criticized International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch and International Amateur Athletic Federation President Primo Nebiolo for sending welcome-back messages to Johnson.

The International Equestrian Federation has recommended that its competition at the 1992 Summer Olympics remain in Barcelona despite an African equine fever that has spread into southern Spain and killed more than 1,200 horses in three years. The FEI considered moving the equestrian events to another European city, but the European Commission’s veterinary experts found that the area around Barcelona was free of the sickness. . . . In France’s biggest sports scandal, Jean Claude-Darmon, the promotions director of the French soccer federation, was charged last Friday with forgery, receiving stolen goods and misappropriation of funds. After his release on bail of $200,000, he made a brief stop at a Marseilles synagogue to pray, then boarded a plane for an unknown destination.

Sampdoria of Genoa remained in first place in soccer’s Italian League after a 4-1 victory Sunday on the road against Maradona’s Naples team, the defending champion. Salvatore Schillaci, Italy’s World Cup hero, scored three goals in Juventus of Turin’s 5-0 victory over AS Roma. In Italy’s version of the USC-UCLA game, Inter-Milan beat AC Milan, 1-0. . . . A team of part-timers from the Irish League almost upset the English League professionals in an all-star game last week. Queen’s Park Rangers forward Roy Wegerle, a South African who wants to play for the United States in the 1994 World Cup and is trying to obtain U.S. citizenship, spared the English embarrassment by scoring with 30 minutes remaining in the 1-1 draw.