Auto Racing

Ayrton Senna was killed during the San Marino Grand Prix when he was struck on the head by a wheel that flew off his damaged car and rebounded off a wall, auto racing chief Bernie Ecclestone told The Times of London.

Basketball

USC, which ended its 1993-94 season in a National Invitation Tournament loss to Fresno State, will open the 1994-95 season as one of 16 teams in the Preseason NIT in November.

Hakeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets, Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls, Charles Oakley of the New York Knicks, Gary Payton of the Seattle SuperSonics and Mookie Blaylock of the Atlanta Hawks were named to the NBA all-defensive team.

Guard Voshon Lenard said he will forgo his senior year at Minnesota to make himself available for the NBA draft. Lenard averaged 18.9 points last season.

Ackerley Communications, which had hoped for an additional $5 million in ticket revenue if its subsidiary, the Seattle SuperSonics, had played in the NBA finals, instead found that its stock fell 8.7% to $7.125 a share Monday and 37.5 cents Tuesday, the first two days of trading after the SuperSonics were beaten by the Denver Nuggets in the first round. Ackerley rebounded slightly Wednesday, up 12.125 cents to $6.875.

Miscellany

Former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, convicted of draft evasion in 1967 when he refused to go into the Army during the Vietnam War, was warmly welcomed in Hanoi, where he brought together the families of two American and two Vietnamese servicemen missing from the war.

A judge reduced charges against Pittsburgh Penguins Peter Taglianetti and Tom Barrasso and the team’s strength coach, John Welday, to misdemeanors, saying a bar fight with an art student didn’t warrant felony counts.

Lithuania will not compete in the European Powerlifting Championships after eight team members were arrested in Stockholm, where they were found with tablets containing anabolic steroids.

Lance Armstrong of Austin, Tex., rode to a wheel-length victory in a 125-mile race from Whytheville to Beech Mountain, N.C., and gained four seconds to move into second place behind Russia’s Viatcheslav Ekimov after seven stages of the Tour DuPont cycling race.

German Bundesliga champion Bayern Munich said it will be without four starters and Coach Franz Beckenbauer when it plays the U.S. national soccer team at Cleveland on May 21.

Names in the News

Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona was barred from entering Japan for World Cup tuneup games because of his drug history. . . . A bid by parents of baseball players to reinstate Mike Scyphers as the Simi Valley High coach was rejected in Ventura County Superior Court. . . . Funeral services will be Friday at 11 a.m. at Westminister Memorial Park in Fountain Valley for Duane Whitehead, a running back for USC in the mid-1940s who died Sunday.

Helmut Kaeser, administrator of world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, for 21 years, died at his home in Kuesnacht, Switzerland. He was 82. . . . Andrei Nikolishin, a member of Russia’s Olympic hockey team, has agreed to a multiyear contract with the Hartford Whalers.