U.S. Skiers Get Another Big One

Only a week after nearly quitting in despair, Kyle Rasmussen became a World Cup winner for the first time--further enhancing the growing reputation of the U.S. ski team.

“I’m overwhelmed,” the 26-year-old native of Angels Camp, Calif., said Saturday after beating Austrian Werner Franzby by eight-hundredths of a second in the Lauberhorn downhill classic in Wengen, Switzerland. “It’s the most important result of my life.”

On a course slowed because of overnight snow, Rasmussen was timed in 2 minutes 28.11 seconds.

Rasmussen, after finishing 54th in the first of two downhills a week earlier at Kitzbuehel, Austria, said at the time that he felt like quitting and returning to his wife, Linda, and two children.

“I then felt I shouldn’t be skiing anymore,” he said. “My wife also phoned me and said, ‘If you ski like that anymore, you should come home.’

“But in Wengen, I just went up, relaxed and had a good time.”

Armin Assinger and Hannes Trinkl completed a 2-3-4 finish for Austria. Italy’s Kristian Ghedina, who won Friday to end a five-year Italian downhill drought, was fifth.

Rasmussen’s victory was the first by an American in a World Cup men’s downhill race since AJ Kitt won at Val d’Isere, France, in December 1991. Kitt was 29th Saturday.

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Five-time Olympic gold medal winner Bonnie Blair won the women’s 500-meter speedskating event for the second day in a row in a three-day World Cup racing event in Davos, Switzerland. *

Austrian Andreas Goldberger sailed 95 meters on his second jump and put together 245.5 points to win the normal hill World Cup ski jump competition in Sapporo, Japan. . . . Former world champion Raphaelle Monod of France and Sergei Shupletsov of Russia won World Cup moguls events at Lac Beauport, Canada.

Baseball

The Montreal Expos will ask the Canadian government for an exemption that would let them use Americans as replacement players at Olympic Stadium, said Chuck O’Connor, baseball’s chief labor attorney.

“We’re relying on two Canadian lawyers, one who works with the Blue Jays and one who works with the Expos,” said O’Connor, the general counsel of management’s player relations committee. “The Montreal club is in the process of working on an exemption.”

The Canadian government said Friday that it will not issue work visas to replacements. That would force the Canadian teams to play all their games in the United States.

Baseball’s expansion committee will meet in Chicago on Feb. 1 and probably will establish the price of the two new teams, expected to be Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Fla. Owners also said interleague play is possible, as is a future franchise in Mexico City.

The teams, which would start play in 1997 or 1998, probably will cost from $125 million-$150 million each. Colorado and Florida each paid $95 million to join the National League in 1993.

The owners of the Oakland Athletics are close to sealing a deal to sell the team for $85 million, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Football

Pittsburgh Steeler assistant Dom Capers is expected to be introduced as the first coach of the expansion Carolina Panthers at a news conference scheduled for Monday in Charlotte, N.C.

Mike Morton of North Carolina returned an interception 47 yards for a touchdown and the South beat the North, 14-7, in a Senior Bowl ruled by defense despite the presence of three Heisman-caliber quarterbacks in Mobile, Ala.

The record crowd of 40,007 expected an offensive show from Alabama’s Jay Barker (six of 11 for 61 yards), Penn State’s Kerry Collins (seven of 17 for 83 yards) and Alcorn State’s Steve McNair (eight of 19 for 88 yards), but instead got only two offensive touchdowns--a 23-yard run by Tennessee’s James Stewart for the South and a two-yard run on the final play of the game by Washington’s Napoleon Kaufman for the North.

Even the most valuable player was a defender, Florida State linebacker Derrick Brooks.

Former Denver Bronco quarterback Norris Weese died after a lengthy fight against bone cancer in Denver. He was 43.

Miscellany

Justin Hromek converted two strikes in the 10th frame and won his third career Professional Bowlers Assn. title, the $200,000 Hilton Hotels Classic in Reno. Hromek, a 27-year-old from Andover, Kan., defeated four rivals en route to victory, including tournament leader Mike Scroggins, 213-190, in the title match to earn the $35,000 first-place check.

Alex Groza, an All-American center who helped lead Kentucky to two national basketball championships in the late 1940s and was a prominent figure in the game’s biggest betting scandal, died of cancer in San Diego. He was 68.