Torvill and Dean Win Title, Witt Falters

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the ice dance title, but Katarina Witt, another former Olympic champion on the comeback trail, fell out of contention in her event Friday at the European Figure Skating Championships at Copenhagen.

Torvill and Dean won one of the closest finishes ever, edging two Russian couples, Oksana Gritschuk and Evgeni Platov, and Maya Usova and Aleksandr Zhulin, the defending world and European champions.

Torvill and Dean, the dance stars from the 1984 Olympics, finished second in the free dance, behind Gritschuk and Platov, who had three 6.0s in artistic impression.

But Torvill and Dean finished second, ahead of Usova and Zhulin, in the final portion of the event and took the overall title.

Witt, the two-time Olympic champion, was in tears after finishing ninth in the women’s technical program.

France’s Surya Bonaly, three-time European champion, edged Oksana Baiul of Ukraine, the current world champion, in the program that counted for one-third of the total score.

The women’s final free skate is today. Witt needs to finish among the top two Germans here to advance to the Olympics. Tanja Szewczenko, who beat her at the German meet, was in fifth. Marina Kielmann, the other German, was 14th.

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Bonnie Blair broke her track record at 1,000 meters and also won the 500-meter race in the World Cup Sprints at Milwaukee. She won the 1,000 in 1:20.41 to break her Pettit Center record of 1:20.46.

Dan Jansen of West Allis, Wis., won the 500-meter race and Kevin Scott of Canada won the 1,000-meter race.

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Randy Will of Binghampton, N.Y., drove his sled to victory in Calgary to win the last of the U.S. Bobsled Federation’s three berths in the Winter Olympics. Brian Shimer of Naples, Fla., won the four-day trials and his sled was designated as USA-1. Jim Herberich of Winchester, Mass., is USA-2.

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Uli Maier of Austria scored her second World Cup victory of the season in a giant slalom at Maribor, Slovenia.

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Olympic moguls champions Donna Weinbrecht of West Milford, N.J., and Frenchman Edgar Grospiron skied through 12-degree cold at Lake Placid, N.Y., and scored narrow World Cup victories.

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Italy broke Germany’s stranglehold on the team title at the European luge championship in Kdenigssee, Germany, edging the perennial gold medalists by a point.

Miscellany

Magic Johnson won’t be allowed into Indonesia with a basketball team next month because he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to one of the country’s officials.

Indonesia’s director general of information, Roni Sikap Sinuraya said that under a 1992 immigration law, the government can refuse to allow people with such diseases into the country.

Officials of the NCAA plan to meet with Justice Department mediators in Denver today to decide if mediation might solve a dispute with the Black Coaches Assn.

Jim Callanan, a three-year letterman end at USC who scored the quickest touchdown in Rose Bowl history, died Thursday of a heart attack. He was 67.

In USC’s 25-0 victory over Tennessee in the 1945 Rose Bowl, Callanan blocked a Volunteer punt and ran it back 32 yards for a touchdown only 1:50 after the opening kickoff.

Callanan was 16 years old during the 1943 season at USC.

Jani Sievinen of Finland bettered his world 200-meter medley short-course swimming record by almost a second at Kuopio, Finland, winning in 1:54.65 at the Finnish indoor championships.

Cal State Northridge’s basketball game against California, scheduled for tonight in Northridge, will be played Feb. 7 in Berkeley. The game had been postponed because of Monday’s earthquake.

The earthquake damage sustained at Anaheim Stadium should not affect the Angels’ 1994 home schedule, city officials said.