Forget Foreman and Holmes: Now This Is a Real Comeback

Viola Krahn was a winner on the three-meter diving board at the U.S. masters’ indoor diving tournament last week. She had no competition. After all, she’s 90, and there were no other contestants in her age group.

“I’m only diving against my own record now,” the Laguna Hills resident said. Her diving career began in 1920, when her family joined the Los Angeles Athletic Club. She won the junior national championships in 1922, 1923 and 1924, as well as some swimming championships. She stopped competing in 1924 when she married her coach, Fred Cady, later an Olympic diving trainer.

Add diver: Viola said she gave up diving to take care of the household because that’s what women did then. In 1978, when she was 77, friends persuaded her to dive again.

She never smoked, but says that had nothing to do with health concerns: “I thought boys wouldn’t want to kiss me if I smelled like smoke.”

Trivia time: Alfred Gilbert of Yale, who shared the gold medal in the Olympic pole vault in 1908, became rich and famous through what invention?

What’s in a name?If the Kentucky Derby runs in 100-year cycles, it could be a good omen for the French-based, Kentucky-bred Arazi. In 1892, a Kentucky-bred colt named Azra won the Derby. One difference: Arazi will have to beat 18 other colts. Azra had to beat only two in the smallest field in Derby history.

Matter of pride: Stories of complaints from rival skippers about New Zealand’s controversial bowsprit in the America’s Cup filled front pages and TV screens in New Zealand for three days.

“Kiwis don’t like being called cheats,” one New Zealand sports editor said. “Even if we are.”

Family tree: Every thoroughbred racehorse today traces his (or her) lineage to one of three stallions: the Byerly Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Barb (or Arabian). These horses were foaled around the turn of the 18th Century, and none of the three ever raced.

Different story: In the TV Times of April 19, it was reported that Ed Arnold, a KTLA sportscaster, helped “clarify” the script of “Final Shot,” the life story of Hank Gathers, the late Loyola Marymount basketball star.

“Among changes that Arnold suggested was correcting the impression that Stan Morrison, Gathers’ coach at USC, had been fired,” the article said.

Morrison was fired, which he has confirmed. Then, he became an assistant athletic director at the school for a short time.

Time enough: Johnny Kelley, the marathoner, decided to retire after completing the recent Boston Marathon, his 61st, in 5 hours 58 minutes.

“I’ve been thinking about it since last year, but I didn’t finish well then and I didn’t want it to end that way,” he said. “This year, I went out with a bang.”

Kelley won the race in 1935 and 1945 and is 84.

Shades of Imelda: Horses are shod with racing plates--made of lightweight aluminum--about once a month.

Trivia answer: The Erector Set.

Under the skin: When major leaguers reminisce about bench jockeys, Leo Durocher’s name usually pops up. Phil Rizzuto, the New York Yankee shortstop in the 1940s and ‘50s, recalls his own Leo the Lip story in Inside Sports:

“He used to find out little personal things about you. With me he’d pick on my size. When I would pop out he’d scream, ‘Home run in an elevator shaft!’ That used to burn me up.”

Quotebook: Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench, on slumps: “They are like a soft bed--easy to get into and hard to get out of.”