Boat’s Victory Is a Real Keeper; Labonte Benefits From Crashes

This time, Billy Boat got the checkered flag and the victory.

Boat, handed the winner’s trophy in last year’s True Value 500K only to be bumped to second following an all-night review, won his first career Indy Racing League event Saturday night in the circuit’s return to the Texas Motor Speedway at Fort Worth.

It wasn’t easy. Greg Ray overtook Boat on the 201st lap, but Boat regained the lead for good on the 202nd of the 208 laps.

Boat, who started second, won by .928 seconds. He led 108 laps and averaged 145.388 mph.

Kenny Brack, Boat’s teammate with A.J. Foyt Enterprises, was third, followed by Scott Goodyear and Scott Sharp. A six-car wreck on the fifth lap triggered by Roberto Guerrero knocked out Indianapolis 500 champion Eddie Cheever.

The victory was sweet redemption for Boat and Foyt, who kept the trophy he received last year and still insists he deserves it, even though Arie Luyendyk was declared the winner. Foyt and Luyendyk scuffled in victory lane last year when the Dutchman charged in to announce that he’d won.

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Rusty Wallace spun out Jeff Gordon while racing him for the lead with 28 laps remaining and Terry Labonte overtook Dale Jarrett with two laps to go to win a wild Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond, Va.

It was Labonte’s first victory of the season and came under a last-lap caution after Johnny Benson brought out the final in a series of late yellow flags by spinning into the wall in Turns 1 and 2 on the 398th lap.

Jarrett finished second, followed by defending champion Rusty Wallace, Ken Schrader, Mark Martin and new series points leader Jeremy Mayfield.

The race was shaping up as a duel between Wallace and Gordon, but it turned into a crash-fest when Wallace helped Gordon into the wall in Turn 2, ending the defending series champion’s night, as well as his latest turn atop the point standings.

“Somebody can’t stand to get passed, I guess,” Gordon said. “I came off Turn 2 and I had the spot on him and he pinched me up into the wall. We rubbed down the back straightaway. Then I finally get in front of him and he just drives into the side of me and spins me out.”

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Porsche was closing in on its third consecutive victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, as two of its factory models were well ahead of the field at the halfway point of the famed French endurance race.

After 12 hours of racing, a Porsche GT1 driven by Alan McNish of Britain and France’s Laurent Aiello and Stephane Ortelli was in the lead, having completed 181 laps.

The car was less than one lap ahead of a Porsche driven by Jorg Muller and Uwe Alzen of Germany and France’s Bob Wolleck.

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Greg Moore turned a lap of 114.859 mph in qualifying for the ITT Automotive Detroit Grand Prix to earn his third CART FedEx Championship Series pole this season. . . . David Coulthard of Great Britain won his third Formula One pole of the season, knocking McLaren teammate Mika Hakkinen of Finland out of the top spot by .069 seconds in qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.

Soccer

A radio station in Argentina reported that World Cup player Juan Veron failed a drug test, a report immediately denied by the player and Coach Daniel Passarela.

Still, team physician Luis Seveso left open the possibility of a positive test and said he will investigate.

England forward Terry Sheringham apologized for a late night of drinking at a Portuguese nightclub, behavior that broke team rules.

Sheringham’s photo was splashed across British newspapers Friday, showing him with a cigarette in his mouth and his arm draped around a young woman in a bar on Portugal’s Algarve coast.

Midfielder Frankie Hejduk, a former star at UCLA, finally rejoined his U.S. teammates in a full practice at Paris after a month on the sidelines because of a right hamstring problem. Hejduk was projected to start for the Americans before he got hurt May 6.

A united Korean team should be fielded for the next World Cup and a mammoth stadium in North Korea’s capital used for some of the games, the outgoing president of soccer’s world body said.

In Paris, FIFA’s Joao Havelange said a joint North-South team had been a success at the last under-16 world championships in Portugal and that a similar effort for the World Cup would fulfill one of his goals.

Miscellany

Six-foot-nine Yugoslavian Predrag Stojakovic, the Sacramento Kings’ first-round draft choice in 1996, has signed a three-year $3.9-million contract with the Kings, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Unbeaten High-Rise, a 20-1 shot, won the English Derby at Epsom, England, defeating City Honours by a nose.

Jason McCray, 20, who saw significant playing time last season as a freshman defensive end at Navy, collapsed and died while playing basketball.

Harvard’s varsity eight overcame an early deficit to defeat Yale by five boat lengths in the annual Harvard-Yale Regatta at New London, Conn.