Sharp Wins IRL 500 With Caution

Scott Sharp picked up his first Indy Racing League victory of the year Saturday night, taking the checkered flag under yellow to win the Kobalt Mechanics Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Sharp passed Robby Unser for the lead on lap 178 and maintained it over the final 30 laps at Hampton, Ga. Sharp held about a half-second lead over Unser with 1 1/2 laps to go when Jacques Lazier, running fourth, spun on the backstretch to bring out the caution.

Sharp, 31, easily beat Unser to the line on the 1.54-mile quad-oval, taking both the yellow and white flags to ensure the fourth IRL victory of his career. He averaged 141.546 mph.

Kenny Brack, the defending race winner and 1998 IRL champion, took third. The only other cars on the lead lap were Eliseo Salazar and Buzz Calkins.

A.J. Foyt’s 22-year-old son, Larry, was involved in a spectacular five-car crash during a Formula 2000 race before IRL’s main event. The younger Foyt suffered bruises and a minor burn on his left arm. He was treated at the infield hospital and released.

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Gil de Ferran of Brazil won a heated duel with Dario Franchitti to take the pole position for the Toronto Molson Indy.

De Ferran, earning his second pole in three races, turned a lap in a track-record 110.121 mph to bump provisional pole winner Franchitti of Scotland into second with a little more than 12 minutes remaining in the 30-minute session.

Moments later, he upped the mark on the 1.755-mile, 11-turn temporary road course tucked between downtown Toronto and Lake Ontario to 110.565.

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Joe Amato led a record parade at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo., recording top-fuel track records for elapsed time (4.584 seconds) and speed (318.54 mph) to close qualifying for the Mile-High Nationals.

Tennis

Michael Chang, once ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, was stunned by 241st-ranked Harel Levy of Israel, 6-4, 6-3, in the semifinals of the $50,000 Safeway Challenger at Aptos, Calif.

Chang was playing in his first tournament since the French Open nine weeks ago, where he lost in the first round to Yevgeny Kafelnikov. He then sat out Wimbledon and its associated warmup tournaments because of a minor back strain.

Currently ranked No. 59, Chang entered the event to get a jump on the North American summer hardcourt season, which culminates with the U.S. Open in late August.

“Obviously, this is very difficult for me,” he said after the loss, which came at the first Challenger-level event he has played since 1987. “I’ll have to fight through this. I have to keep pressing on. Hopefully sometime soon things will be picking up for me.”

Levy, 20, will take on Michael Hill of Australia in today’s final. Hill defeated fourth-seeded Laurence Tieleman, who retired because of a pulled thigh muscle with Hill leading, 6-4, 6-7 (7-2), 1-0.

Jennifer Capriati, slowly reviving a troubled career, won 11 of the final 14 games and defeated unheralded Erika deLone, 7-5, 6-2, in the semifinals of the A&P; Tennis Classic at Mahwah, N.J.

Chanda Rubin, like Capriati a two-time winner of this event, also got a chance for a third title by defeating Amanda Coetzer, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), in the second semifinal on a hot, hazy day when the courtside temperature reached 110 degrees.

Rubin had to be treated for dehydration after the match.

Conchita Martinez of Spain beat Sandrine Testud of France, 6-3, 6-3, and Karina Habsudova defeated Sylvia Talaia of Croatia, 6-3, 6-1, in the semifinals of the $180,000 Polish Open at Sopot.

Pro Football

Receiver Terrell Owens has reached agreement with the San Francisco 49ers on a seven-year contract worth at least $23 million, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The contract includes a signing bonus of $7.5 million and an escalator clause that could push the total value of the deal to as much as $35 million, the newspaper said.

Former UCLA quarterback Cade McNown has been cited on careless-driving charges after a minor two-car crash last week in Lake Oswego, Ore., police said.

The first-round draft pick of the Chicago Bears was driving his older brother’s Chevrolet Suburban when he ran into the rear of a minivan about 4:25 p.m. on July 11, according to a Lake Oswego police report.

McNown, a native of the neighboring Portland suburb of West Linn, faces a fine of up to $500.

Miscellany

The New York Rangers added yet another free agent to their roster with the reported signing of defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre.

Lefebvre became the sixth free agent acquired by the Rangers in a two-week period since the free-agent market opened on July 1, including the prize of the free-agent crop in Theo Fleury.

The Colorado Avalanche traded backup goaltender Craig Billington to the Washington Capitals for future considerations.

Cuban-born Juan Carlos Gomez, who now fights in Germany, stopped Bruce Scott of Jamaica with a barrage of punches in the sixth round to retain the World Boxing Council cruiserweight title at Dusseldorf, Germany.

Noah Ngeny of Kenya barely failed to break Sebastian Coe’s 18-year-old 1,000-meter world record, falling 48 hundredths of a second short at the Nikaia Grand Prix meeting at Nice.

Ngeny’s time was 2:12.66.

After months of controversy, about 5,700 boxes of records from the 1996 Summer Olympics will be made available to the public starting Monday.

The documents, which range from sponsorship contracts to documents related to the design and development of venue sites, created conflict between Olympic organizers and congressional investigators looking into possible corruption in the bid for the 1996 Games.

Billy Payne, former chief of the now-defunct Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, decided to released the bulk of the records in an effort to quell the controversy.

Vince Range of St. Louis threw the fourth championship-round perfect game in the history of the PBA Senior Tour, then beat Dick Baker, 244-220, in the title match of the PBA Showboat Senior Invitational at Las Vegas.