When a Mower’s Clippings Pass for Powder, Skiing Gets Rough

With so little snow at home, the Taiwanese ski team trains on grass--and it’s risky.

“If you fall on ice, you slide. If you fall on grass, you plant. The injuries can be much greater,” slalom racer Tang Wei-tsu said.

Training for the downhill is too dangerous on grass, so none of the Taiwanese skiers entered those events at the Winter Olympics.

Said Tang: “We basically compete against other countries that have no snow: India, Greece, Morocco, the Philippines, Swaziland.”

Trivia time: What was UCLA’s record against USC in basketball from 1933 to 1942?

Pig update: Golden State Warrior Coach Don Nelson, who was ordered by authorities to evict his pet pig, returned her to its breeder.

“I didn’t want people to think that I thought I was above the law,” Nelson said. “I only had the pig a few days, but it was a few days of a lot of laughs. I got sort of attached to it.”

Chip off the old block: Brett Hayhoe is an incoming USC freshman linebacker from Sparks, Nev., who blocked an extra-point try while in high school.

Significant? Perhaps. His father, Bill Hayhoe, blocked a field-goal attempt and forced an extra-point try wide during USC’s 21-20 victory over UCLA in 1967 when the national championship was on the line for both teams.

Innocent party: Former Baltimore Colt tight end John Mackey told how he found out that he would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“A hotel operator called and said I had been ‘indicted.’ I panicked and said, ‘For what?’ ”

No age barrier: Jerry Barber, who is 75, has shot his age, or better, more than 60 times while competing on the PGA Senior Tour.

Barber will play in the GTE West Classic March 6-8 at the Ojai Valley Inn & Country Club--and he will be walking. He does not use a golf cart.

Tribute: The “press information area” in the Olympic museum in Brides-les-Baines, France, features four mannequins in outdated suits, according to C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle.

“They were sitting at a table that was littered with full ashtrays, a bottle of Scotch and a badly broken typewriter,” Nevius writes.

Trivia answer: It was 0-39. UCLA has a 103-89 lead overall.

Quotebook: Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post on CBS-TV’s Olympic coverage: “Isn’t it a smidgen pretentious to run a five-minute mood piece using only natural sounds of snow, wind and rushing streams? Can’t you stick your head near a toilet bowl and hear pretty much the same stuff?”