Brazilian Player Reports a $150,000 Theft

Brazilian soccer player Julio Cesar said $50,000 in U.S. currency and $100,000 worth of Rolex and Cartier watches were stolen from his room at the Quality Inn in Silver Spring, Md., on Thursday.

“I didn’t sleep (Thursday) night,” Cesar said Friday. “I don’t want to play Sunday” when Brazil will face England in Washington in the U.S. Cup.

“It’s not that I don’t want to play,” he said. “I do want to play. But I am so distracted. If I do play, I will not be at my best and will damage the team.”

Cesar said he had declared the money when he went through U.S. Customs and had debated taking it to the stadium the day of the game against Germany. He decided to leave it in a locked suitcase.

Two other players, Careca and Valber, lost a total of $8,300, according to Brazilian spokesman Francisco Marcos.

Winter Olympics

Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Viktor Petrenko, the last three Olympic men’s figure skating champions, are among 14 professional skaters cleared to resume international competition, including next year’s Winter Olympics.

The reinstatements by the International Skating Union were decided upon during the ISU Council’s meeting in Wurzberg, Germany. Each skater had previously been reinstated by his country’s national governing body.

Among the others reinstated were Anett Poetzsch, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev, Elaine Zayak, Christopher Bowman, Joseph Mero and Vern Taylor.

Cycling

Miguel Indurain of Spain all but secured his second Tour of Italy championship by routing his rivals in an uphill time test. Indurain dominated the 19th stage, leading from start to finish. With only two stages left, Indurain has an overall lead of 1 minute 34 seconds over Latvian Piotre Ugrumov.

Auto Racing

Ken Schrader won his third pole of the NASCAR season by breaking his track record with a 162.816-m.p.h. lap during qualifying for Sunday’s Champion Spark Plug 500 at Long Pond, Pa.

Alain Prost smashed the Gilles Villeneuve Circuit qualifying record on the way to winning the provisional pole for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.

The Frenchman, who has started each of this season’s six Formula One events from the pole, drove his Renault-powered Williams around the 2.753-mile course in 1 minute 18.987 seconds, averaging 125.459 m.p.h.

Bryan Herta of Los Angeles shattered the track record in provisional qualifying for Sunday’s Firestone Indy Lights Championship race at Belle Isle Park, Mich., with a speed of 93.321 m.p.h.

Miscellany

Tens of thousands of fans celebrated the Montreal Canadiens’ Stanley Cup victory over the Kings during a parade in Montreal. There were no incidents similar to the rioting that followed Wednesday’s victory. . . . World record-holder Noureddine Morceli’s easy victory in the 1,500 meters highlighted a rainy international track and field meet at St. Denis, France. The Algerian ran away from the field to win in 3 minutes 36.04 seconds.

Names in the News

Softball player Lisa Fernandez was voted UCLA’s female athlete of the year. . . . Steffi Graf’s foot injury is more severe than earlier believed and she might not be able to defend her women’s singles title at Wimbledon, her agent said. . . . Former professional football player Lewis Billups pleaded guilty to making threats against Washington Bullet basketball player Rex Chapman, whose sister Billups had been dating, and could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and be fined $250,000.