DNA Test Results Link Albert to Assault Case

DNA evidence links Marv Albert to a bite mark on the back of the woman who says the sportscaster sexually assaulted her, according to a police laboratory report released Monday.

The genetic tests also link Albert to semen stains recovered from the woman’s underwear and skin, the report by the Virginia state crime lab at Arlington concluded.

The report is part of the sodomy and assault case against Albert, who has denied the 42-year-old Vienna (Va.) woman’s allegations. The NBC sportscaster has not entered a plea and goes to trial Sept. 22 in Arlington County Circuit Court.

The Virginia Division of Forensic Science report found only a 1-in-2.6 billion chance some of the samples taken from the woman could have come from someone other than Albert.

Albert’s lawyer, Roy Black, criticized Virginia authorities for releasing the report, but did not address the findings.

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The assault case in Charlottesville, Va., against University of Virginia basketball player Courtney Alexander, 20, was continued to Aug. 25 amid indications his girlfriend, Joiel Coleman, 21, was willing to drop the charge.

Motor Sports

Indy cars will return to the Atlanta Motor Speedway next year for the first time since 1983. The Indy Racing League announced a new race, the Atlanta 500 Classic, which will be run Aug. 29, 1998, and will offer a purse of more than $1 million. The last Indy car race in Atlanta was the 1983 season opener, won by Gordon Johncock. Nine other Indy races were run there from 1965-82, including five won by Rick Mears and three by Johnny Rutherford, now the IRL pace car driver.

NASCAR officials today will announce a Winston Cup stock car race March 1 or March 8 at the 110,000-seat Las Vegas Speedway oval. The race will take the spot now held by the Pontiac Excitement 400 in Richmond, Va., and will bring to 33 the number of races on the 1998 Winston Cup schedule.

College Basketball

California Coach Ben Braun agreed to a new five-year contract that will run through the 2001-2002 season. Last season, his first at Cal, Braun was voted Pacific 10 coach of the year for leading the Golden Bears to a 23-9 record--the best by a Cal men’s basketball team in 37 years--and a berth in the final 16 in the NCAA tournament.

Denmark Reid has been tossed off the New Mexico State team for conduct unbecoming Aggie athletics, a school spokesman said. Reid, a 6-foot senior from Portland, Ore., holds the school record for three-point baskets in one season with 84.

Swimming

Led by Jenny Thompson of Stanford, American swimmers won five of eight events at the biennial Pan Pacific meet in Fukuoka, Japan, and tied Australia for the overall lead with eight gold medals apiece. Thompson, a five-time Olympic champion, defeated China’s 1996 Olympic gold medalist and world record-holder Le Jingyi by .04 of a second in the 100-meter freestyle, finishing in 54.82 seconds, a meet record.

Olympic Games

Authorities in Stockholm discounted an extremist group’s claim that it had planted the bomb that damaged the 1912 Olympic stadium, and said they remain confident the incident will not hurt Stockholm’s bid to hold the 2004 Summer Games. Sweden’s national news agency, TT, received a letter from a group that opposes the bid and says it plotted the predawn bombing, in which no one was injured.

Miscellany

The Kings re-signed left wing Craig Johnson, a restricted free agent, to a one-year contract, terms of which were not announced. . . . The Galaxy will start goalkeeper Jorge Campos tonight against Luis Angel Firpo of El Salvador in the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Cup of Champions at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. . . . Pat Jablonski, a free-agent goalie who spent last season with Montreal and Phoenix, signed a multiyear contract with the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.

The Seattle SuperSonics signed 6-foot-9 forward Aaron Williams, 26, to a one-year contract. . . . W. Lee Schroeder, vice president for finance and administration at Oregon State, was named interim athletic director, succeeding Dutch Baughman, who resigned last week. . . . Roy Chipman, who took the Pitt Panthers into Big East basketball and had a 102-76 record in six seasons as coach, died of liver and colon cancer at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 58.

Doug Adams, 48, a linebacker on Ohio State’s 1968 national championship team who later played for the Cincinnati Bengals, was killed when a vehicle struck him while he rode his bicycle in eastern Brown County, Ohio.

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* Randy Harvey is on vacation