Report Says Samaranch Given Two Firearms Valued at $1,000

International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch was given at least two Browning firearms by Salt Lake City’s bid committee, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Tuesday.

A shotgun and rifle, which together had a retail value of about $1,000, were delivered to Samaranch’s office by Browning’s Swiss distributor in May 1995 at the bid committee’s request, Rich Bauter, vice president of firearms marketing for Browning, told the newspaper.

The company, based in Mountain Green, Utah, billed the bid committee.

Rules at the time barred IOC members from accepting gifts in excess of $150.

In December, Samaranch appointed an IOC panel to investigate allegations the Salt Lake City bid committee bribed IOC members in its campaign to win the 2002 Winter Olympics.

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As World Maccabi Union president Ronald Bakalarz was about to testify at a special parliamentary inquiry in Jerusalem, four Israeli Maccabi champions turned in their medals and demanded that Bakalarz step down. The athletes say Bakalarz must assume responsibility for the collapse of a footbridge during the opening ceremony at last year’s games that killed four athletes and injured 64.

Boxing

An outburst by Mike Tyson during a routine conference call with reporters seemed in keeping with the report psychiatrists made to the Nevada Athletic Commission.

During the call to promote his Jan. 16 fight with Francois Botha in Las Vegas, Tyson was asked if he felt any affinity with Sonny Liston.

“I have a great affinity for him,” said Tyson, who then launched into his tirade, which, with obscenities deleted, said: “I’m a man, I stand on my own two feet . . . stop sucking up . . . don’t be politically correct, stand on your own two feet.”

The psychiatrists’ report on Tyson read in part: “Mr. Tyson’s changes from normal mood to anger seem to be triggered by his belief that he is being used, victimized and treated unfairly.”

Baseball

Pete Rose is returning to baseball as a hitting instructor for an independent minor league team that isn’t covered by the ban imposed on him by Major League Baseball in 1989.

Bruce Portner, owner of the expansion Sacramento Steelheads of the Western League, said that Rose agreed to sign a personal services contract that will include participating in three to four days of hitting clinics for Steelhead players in April.

Rose will also throw out the first pitch at the Steelheads home opener on May 28 and make a variety of other appearances during the team’s 90-game schedule, Portner added.

Rose’s banishment does not extend to the Western League, which operates outside of Major League Baseball’s minor league system.

A proposal announced by President Clinton designed to improve relations between the U.S. and Cuba could lead to the Baltimore Orioles playing an exhibition game in Cuba. The Orioles are expected to send a group to Cuba to negotiate arrangements for a two-game, home-and-home series.

The Clinton administration said the games will be allowed only if profits go to humanitarian assistance in Cuba and not to the Fidel Castro regime.

The last major league team to visit Cuba was the Brooklyn Dodgers, who trained in Havana in 1947.

Winter Sports

Patrick Holzer, with a near-perfect second run in a World Cup giant slalom at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, stunned the dominant Austrian team for his first victory in seven years.

Hermann Maier, the overall World Cup leader, placed 20th, but his Austrian teammates finished two-three-four.

Artem Tschoubarov scored his second goal of the game in overtime to give Russia the gold medal at the world junior hockey championship with a 3-2 victory over Canada at Winnipeg. Slovakia won the bronze with a 5-4 victory over Sweden.

Miscellany

Hydroplane racing legend Jim Kropfeld, a three-time national champion driver in Miss Budweiser, is dead at 58.

Kropfeld, who lived in Cincinnati, died Sunday of cancer. Kropfeld won national championships in 1984, 1986 and 1987.

A 12-year-old girl testified that former NCAA track champion Chris Nelloms, who ran for Ohio State, raped her numerous times.

The girl told a Montgomery County Common Pleas Court jury in Dayton, Ohio, that the first assault happened in 1996 when she was 9.

Nelloms, now 26, was indicted in June and charged with eight counts of rape of a child under 13 and one count of attempt to commit rape of a child under 13 and felonious sexual penetration of a child under 13.

Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Unser’s conviction and $75 fine for snowmobiling in the South San Juan Wilderness Area in Colorado were upheld by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

The Galaxy traded defender Dan Calichman to the New England Revolution for two draft picks. The Galaxy got New England’s second-round pick in the college draft and its first-round pick, and the first pick overall, in the supplemental draft.

Petr Korda, the Czech left-hander making his first appearance since it was revealed that he had tested positive for drugs at Wimbledon, was upset by Morocco’s Karim Alami, 7-6 (7-5), 2-6, 6-3, in the opening round of the $1-million Qatar Open in Doha.