Muster Stumbles, Hangs On, Wins

Thomas Muster, dehydrated and barely standing at the end, staggered to victory Saturday to reach the final of the Monte Carlo Open against Boris Becker.

Muster, unbeaten on clay this year, held on for a 6-3, 7-6 (7-5) victory over Italy’s Andrea Gaudenzi. Becker beat Goran Ivanisevic, 7-6 (11-9), 3-6, 6-1, to advance to his third Monte Carlo final.

Muster hasn’t lost a final on clay since 1990 and is unbeaten in 21 matches on the surface this year. In all, he has won 25 titles on clay.

Becker has a chance for his first pro clay-court title after winning 43 titles on fast surfaces.

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Arantxa Sanchez Vicario beat Amanda Coetzer, 6-3, 6-3, and Iva Majoli beat Katarzyna Nowak, 6-3, 6-1, to reach the finals of the Barcelona tournament.

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Sabine Appelmans moved to the finals of the Croatia Open by upsetting second-seeded Irina Spirlea, 7-5, 7-5, in Zagreb. Appelmans will face Silke Meier, who defeated Sabina Szabova, 6-2, 6-0.

Jurisprudence

University of Michigan football Coach Gary Moeller was arrested after getting into a fight in a suburban Detroit restaurant Friday night and was released on bond. He will be arraigned on May 8.

Judge Maurizio Passarini, who is investigating last year’s fatal crash of Ayrton Senna, questioned Formula One officials at the Imola track in Italy. He is considering whether to press criminal charges against the Williams team that provided the car driven by Senna.

Auto Racing

Dale Earnhardt led a typical cavalry-charge finish in the International Race of Champions round at Talladega Superspeedway, getting help from a drafting Mark Martin in winning a four-wide run to the line over Indy car driver Scott Pruett, fellow Winston Cup driver Jeff Gordon and sprint-car champion Steve Kinser by less than three feet.

Earnhardt led for 17 of the 38 laps, averaging 187.474 m.p.h. on the 2.66-mile, high-banked oval.

Michael Schumacher crashed his Benetton-Renault in practice but retained the pole position for today’s San Marino Grand Prix in the Formula One series because his Friday qualifying speed of 124.779 m.p.h. held up over the new Imola circuit in Italy.

Elton Sawyer, a fill-in driver in Junior Johnson’s second Winston Cup entry, led second-day qualifiers in time trials for today’s Winston Select 500, turning in a lap of 192.305 m.p.h. to get the 31st starting position in the 42-car lineup at Talladega, Ala.

Track and Field

The Villanova women’s team, under the guidance of first-year Coach John Marshall, won the 3,200-meter relay at the 100th Penn Relays in Philadelphia. The Villanova women earlier won the distance medley relay and the 6,000-meter relay.

Arizona’s Martin Keino, son of Kenyan distance great Kip Keino, brought the Wildcats from 20 meters behind to win the university distance medley relay, running 1,600 meters in 3 minutes 58.6 seconds at the 86th Drake Relays in Des Moines to give Arizona a time 9:40.65 in the 1,200 x 400 x 800 x 1,600 event.

Hockey

Pavel Janku scored in the game’s first 47 seconds and sent the Czech Republic to a 3-1 victory over Norway to clinch the last quarterfinal berth in the World Hockey Championship in Sweden.

Miscellany

Vincent Pettway, rebounding from a first-round knockdown, retained his International Boxing Federation junior-middleweight title by knocking out three-time world champion Simon Brown in the sixth round at Landover, Md. . . . South African Mbulelo Botile knocked out bantamweight champion Harold Mestre of Colombia in the second round and South African Vuyani Bungu retained his junior-featherweight crown with a unanimous decision over Colombian Victor Llerena in International Boxing Federation title fights in Johannesburg.

Djamolidin Abdujaparov of Uzbekistan took the lead with 30 yards left to win the third stage of the Tour DuPont, a 133-mile ride from Richmond to Lynchburg in Virginia, in 6 hours 2 minutes 32 seconds. Italy’s Andrea Peron retained his overall race lead.

Consistent winds carried Roy Disney’s Pyewacket and Steve Fossett’s trimaran Double Bullet to within minutes of the records for mono-hulls and multi-hulls, respectively, in the 48th Newport Beach-to-Ensenada race. Pyewacket finished the race in 12 hours 15 minutes 39 seconds, only 2:06 slower than the record. Lakota was first in 8 hours 40 minutes.