IRL Makes Changes After Fatal Spectator Accident

The Indy Racing League will start requiring wheel-tether systems beginning with the Indianapolis 500 May 30, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The move was made in response to the sport’s latest fatal spectator accident.

The IRL’s largest promoter, Speedway Motorsports Inc., also announced plans in Concord, N.C., to raise the height of safety fences at its tracks.

The company owns the tracks at which five of the 11 IRL races are run, among them Lowe’s Motor Speedway at Concord, where three spectators were killed and eight injured by a flying wheel and suspension parts during a race May 1.

IRL teams will test the new restraining cables during Carburetion Day, May 27, the last practice session before the race. The 500 will be the first IRL event since the accident at Concord.

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Writer Ed Hinton of Sports Illustrated has been denied credentials for the Indy 500, partly because the magazine ran a photograph of a sheet-covered body after three fans were killed at the IRL race in Concord.

In response, the magazine said in New York that it would not cover the event.

Tony George, president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and founder of the IRL, said in a letter to the magazine that Hinton, the magazine’s senior auto racing writer, would be barred because of the photo and accompanying story, in which Hinton wrote that such accidents could be avoided.

The speedway offered to provide credentials for another writer, but the magazine declined.

Tennis

Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia will be top seeded for the French Open despite six consecutive recent first-round losses. Martina Hingis of Switzerland, the Australian Open winner, will be the top-seeded woman, ahead of Lindsay Davenport and Monica Seles, in the clay-court major that begins Monday.

Miscellany

A fax service called Thoroughbred Daily News ran a quote from trainer Bob Baffert that got the attention of owner Bob Lewis, whose 3-year-old, Charismatic, has won the Triple Crown or horse racing’s first two legs, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.

Baffert, who trains many horses for the Lewises, Bob and Beverly of Newport Beach, but does not train Charismatic, was quoted as saying that he was convinced that his filly, Silverbulletday, was “the best 3-year-old in the land.” Lewis read this, took some exception to it, and turned it into a fun challenge, saying he would put up $100,000 to Baffert’s $100,000 for whichever horse finished ahead of the other in the June 5 Belmont, the third leg of the Triple Crown. The $200,000 would go to the equine charity of the winner’s choice.

The problem was, Baffert said he didn’t say what he was quoted as saying, that he told the fax service that Silverbulletday was the “best filly” and that “the only way to find out if she was the best 3-year-old horse was to run her in the Belmont,” a decision that has yet to be made.

As the day wore into evening, Baffert convinced the fax service to run a statement from him saying he didn’t say that. The editor of the fax service, Sue Finley of Fair Haven, N.J., said that, while Baffert’s statement would run, the service stuck by its original story. Lewis said the $100,000 challenge remains, at least until “Charismatic was shown the respect he deserves.”

Felix Trinidad has until 5 p.m. PDT today to accept a $10-million offer to fight Oscar De La Hoya on Sept. 18 in a welterweight unification bout or promoter Bob Arum says he will withdraw the offer. . . . If Trinidad doesn’t agree, Arum said De La Hoya, who defends his WBC title Saturday against Oba Carr, will go ahead with a rematch against Ike Quartey on the same date.

The Massachusetts House and Senate approved a plan for a new $225-million stadium for the New England Patriots, but voters overwhelmingly rejected a $1.8-billion convention center and sports complex that would have featured a new stadium for the Arizona Cardinals.