200 Winner Is a Little Different

When Kevin Little crossed the finish line first in the 200 meters at the World Indoor track and field championships at Paris on Saturday, he had to answer questions about his race.

Little is white.

“I realize I’m a white man, but I’m trying to be the fastest sprinter in the world, not the fastest white man,” said Little, 28, after tying the U.S. record of 20.40 seconds. “The way I see it, a man won the 200. It doesn’t matter what color.”

Little’s win was the first by a white American sprinter in a major international meet--Olympics or World Championships--since 1956 when Bobby Morrow swept the 100 and 200, and ran on the winning 400-meter relay team at the Melbourne Games.

Mary Slaney, 38, finished second in her heat at 1,500 meters to qualify for the finals. Slaney, who won the 1,500- and 3,000-meter titles in the 1983 world outdoor championships in Helsinki, finished behind Patricia Djate-Taillard of France. Djate-Taillard was timed in 4 minutes 9 seconds, Slaney in 4:10.37.

*

UCLA’s Amy Acuff won the NCAA indoor women’s high jump for the third time in four years as she cleared 6-3 1/4 at Indianapolis.

Arkansas won its 13th men’s title in 14 years and the Louisiana State women won their fifth in a row.

Golf

The Blue Monster course at the Doral-Golf Resort & Spa, site of the Doral-Ryder Open, swallowed up ball after ball in its 118 bunkers. A devilish crosswind blowing across those bunkers created a sandstorm at times.

As a result, David Duval emerged from the chaos as the third-round leader despite getting only three pars. He did manage nine birdies in shooting a 70 that put him at 12-under-par 204.

Nick Price is second by a stroke.

Boxing

Junior bantamweight champions Johnny Tapia and Danny Romero, fighting before a boisterous hometown crowd in Albuquerque, set up a long-awaited showdown this summer with knockout victories.

Tapia (40-0-2, 24 KOs) stopped Mexico’s Jorge Barrera in the third round to retain the World Boxing Organization title, and Romero (30-1, 27 KOs) followed with a sixth-round victory over South Africa’s Jaji Sibali to keep the International Boxing Federation belt.

Auto Racing

Britain’s David Coulthard, taking advantage of the misfortune of the favored Williams cars, ended McLaren’s 49-race Formula One losing streak with a victory today in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne.

Coulthard took the lead with three laps remaining when Heinz-Harald Frentzen spun off the course. Frentzen’s Williams-Renault teammate, pole-sitter Jacques Villeneuve, was involved in a crash at the first turn on the first of 58 laps at the 3.294-mile Albert Park road course.

Mark Martin won the Stihl Outdoor Power Tools 300 in Hampton, Ga., giving the stock car driver three consecutive NASCAR Busch Grand National Series victories.

Tennis

Unseeded Czech Daniel Vacek upset top-seeded Goran Ivanisevic, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (7-2), in the semifinals of the ABN AMRO tournament at Rotterdam, Netherlands. Second-seeded Dutchman Richard Krajicek won the other semifinal, beating third-seeded Thomas Enqvist of Sweden, 6-7 (7-5), 6-3, 6-4.

Australian Mark Philippoussis used 19 aces to advance to his first ATP Tour final of the year with a 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 victory over Chris Woodruff in the Franklin Templeton Classic at Scottsdale, Ariz. He will face Richey Reneberg, a 6-3, 6-3 winner over Swede Jonas Bjorkman.

Winter Sports

Bjorn Dahlie of Norway won the 15-kilometer cross-country race at the Swedish Nordic Ski Games at Gronklitt, Sweden, to clinch his fifth World Cup overall title.

Dahlie, who won three gold medals at the World Nordic Ski Championships, has won six World Cup races this season and 36 in his career.

Michael von Gruenigen of Switzerland followed his world title in giant slalom with another World Cup victory at Shigakogen, Japan. Von Gruenigen’s aggregate time of 2 minutes 41.68 seconds enabled him to win his third championship in this season’s World Cup series.

Sven Fischer of Germany captured the World Cup biathlon in the 10-kilometer sprint at Nozawa Onsen, Japan, winning by 45 seconds at a 1998 Olympic venue. Russia’s Olga Romasko won the women’s 7 1/2-kilometer sprint.

Jurisprudence

Banned from the NBA for drug and alcohol use, Roy Tarpley is accused of public intoxication after law officers found the former Dallas Maverick passed out in his car Thursday in Dallas.

Reggie Rogers, a former defensive lineman for the University of Washington and the Detroit Lions, was found guilty of drunken driving in Seattle.

Rogers previously served a year in jail for causing the deaths of three teenagers in a 1988 traffic accident in Pontiac, Mich.

Miscellany

Taj McWilliams scored 20 points and grabbed two key rebounds in the final minutes at Richmond, Va., to lead the Richmond Rage to a 72-67 victory over the Columbus Quest and a 2-1 series lead in the best-of-five American Basketball League championship series. . . . Two-time champion Martin Buser cruised into Kaltag, Alaska, retaining about a two-hour lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race with about 360 miles to go. . . . Top-ranked Stanford won its 16th consecutive Pacific 10 men’s swimming title at Belmont Plaza. USC finished second.