Lewis and McCall to Fight for WBC Heavyweight Title

Lennox Lewis and Oliver McCall will fight for the vacant World Boxing Council heavyweight title, probably on Feb. 7, promoter Panos Eliades said Monday.

Eliades said Las Vegas, London and Atlantic City are prospective sites.

Don King last week was stripped of the right to promote the fight by a judge in New Jersey.

King failed to produce a contract to stage the fight within 15 days of winning the rights, as required under WBC rules. The rights were awarded to the next highest bidder, Main Events of New Jersey.

Dino Duva, head of Main Events, said the Feb. 7 date should be firm before the week is out.

Lewis and McCall are both former WBC champions.

Skiing

Two years after his last victory, Josef Strobl became a winner again with a surprising win in a men’s World Cup giant slalom in Park City, Utah.

Strobl proved he was more than a downhiller by beating fellow Austrian Hans Knaus and Swiss star Michael Von Gruenigen. Strobl, the surprise leader by .52 seconds in the morning run despite starting 20th, showed it was no fluke by completing two runs in a combined 2 minutes 31.42 seconds.

He beat Knaus, a giant slalom specialist, by .42 seconds and Von Gruenigen, the defending World Cup giant slalom champion, by .48.

Strobl had only one previous top-10 finish in giant slalom but that was more a matter of the makeup of the Austrian team than any shortcoming by him.

“In my first season [1995], I won a downhill, and as a member of the downhill team you train only downhill,” Strobl said. “Then last year, I joined the giant slalom team as well and I spent the summer doing a lot of giant slalom training.”

Strobl got a break in the morning run down C.B’s Run when a steady snow slacked off long enough to benefit racers starting in the second group.

Strobl made the most of the opportunity by knocking Von Gruenigen from the lead, but other late starters, such as Patrick Holzer of Italy and Hermann Maier of Germany, also got a boost.

Fredrik Nyberg of Sweden was fourth overall in 2:32.17, followed by Holzer in 2:32.54.

Von Gruenigen took over the lead in the World Cup overall standings with 154 points to 136 for Norway’s Kjetil Andre Aamodt, who was 15th in 2:33.36.

Awards

Eleven 1996 Olympic gold medalists, four of them in swimming and three in athletics, have been nominated for the 1997 Jesse Owens International Trophy Award, International Amateur Athletic Assn. President Edwin Moses announced in New York.

American Michael Johnson--the first man to take Olympic gold in both the 200 and 400 meters, the 200 with a world record--could also become the first two-time Jesse Owens award winner, having received it this year. The 1997 award will be presented on February 4 in New York.

Canadian Donovan Bailey, who set a 100-meter world record in Atlanta, and Marie-Jose Perec of France, women’s 200 and 400 meters winner, were the other track stars nominated.

The swimmers nominated were Penelope Heyns of South Africa, the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke gold medalist; Aleksandr Popov of Russia, 50- and 100-meter freestyle winner; triple gold medalist Michelle Smith of Ireland, 400 freestyle, 200 and 400 individual medley; and quadruple gold medalist Amy Van Dyken of the United States, 50 freestyle, 100 butterfly and 400 freestyle and medley relays.

Two Chinese were nominated, diver Fu Mingxia and gymnast Li Xiaoshuang. Also nominated were Cuban boxer Felix Savon and Turkish weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu.

Miscellany

Stanford won the men’s and women’s NCAA cross-country titles in Tucson, Ariz., marking the first time since 1985 that one school won both titles. The last team to win both was Wisconsin.

The Stanford men beat Arkansas, although the Razorbacks did have the individual champion, Godfrey Siamusiye. The Stanford women scored 101 points to edge Villanova by five.

Siamusiye was clocked in 29 minutes 49 seconds over 6.2 miles to become the first repeating champion since Henry Rono of Washington State in 1976-77. Arizona sophomore Amy Skieresz won the women’s race in 17:04.

Saxon C. Elliot, former Cal State Los Angeles basketball coach, died Nov. 19 in Montecito, after a brief illness. Memorial services will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Welch-Ryce-Haider Funeral Chapel in Santa Barbara.