Nebiolo Eulogized as ‘Great Leader’

Primo Nebiolo was remembered Tuesday as one of the century’s great sports leaders during a memorial at a tiny stadium in Rome--the sort of place track and field meets were held before he invigorated the sport.

About 300 people attended the 45-minute public service at Marmi Stadium, an arena with white marble stands surrounded by 53 Romanesque statues of athletes.

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch bestowed upon Nebiolo the IOC’s highest honor, the Gold Olympic Order. He placed the award’s symbol, a gold necklace with the five Olympic rings, on Nebiolo’s casket. He then took a step back and bowed.

“With Nebiolo’s death we lose one of the great sports leaders of the century,” said Samaranch, who eulogized the multilingual Nebiolo in Spanish, French and English. “He was able to elevate athletics to the place it deserved in our contemporary society,”

*

The Swiss national Olympic association punished the country’s cycling federation for obstructing drug tests. The association cut $32,500 from the cycling federation’s annual subsidy because of an incident in August at a race in northern Switzerland.

College Basketball

Connecticut held the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press preseason women’s basketball poll, finishing ahead of Southeastern Conference powers Tennessee and Georgia.

Connecticut also led the men’s poll, the third time the school has had both its basketball teams at No. 1. It happened last season and also in 1995.

The Connecticut women received 29 of a possible 45 first-place votes from broadcasters and sportswriters, and had 1,095 points. Tennessee was second with nine first-place votes and 1,057 points, and Georgia third with four first-place votes and 1,015 points.

No. 4 Rutgers received one first-place vote and fifth-ranked UCLA had two. UCLA has not been ranked this high since it was fifth the week of Feb. 17, 1981.

The UCLA men’s basketball team will probably be without three prominent players when it opens exhibition play tonight against a Lithuanian club, Kraitene Marijampole, at 7:30 at Pauley Pavilion.

Ryan Bailey (right foot), Dan Gadzuric (knees) and Ray Young (thumb) are expected to rest minor injuries. Young may also sit out a Nov. 18 exhibition against the California All-Stars.

Jim Harrick Jr., son of Georgia’s basketball coach, was hired as an assistant to Larry Farmer at Loyola of Chicago.

Reggie Hall was suspended from the Bradley basketball team after he was arrested for using a teammate’s driver’s license at a downtown tavern in Peoria, Ill. . . . St. Mary’s Coach Othell Wilson, indicted on charges of kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend, can leave jail during weekdays for work, a judge has ruled. But the college said that Wilson would remain on administrative leave.

Miscellany

Saying they “behaved like monsters,” a court in Essen, Germany, convicted and sentenced four soccer hooligans to up to 10 years in prison for the near-fatal beating of a French policeman at last year’s World Cup. The attack left officer Daniel Nivel in a coma for six weeks. . . . Fred Couples will replace the late Payne Stewart in the Skins Game Nov. 27-28 at Indio.

Wilt Chamberlain was honored by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives with a resolution “recognizing the achievements and honoring the legacy” of the Philadelphia native. . . . World Boxing Assn. welterweight champion James Page was arrested in Concord, Calif., for public drunkenness and suspicion of battery after he punched a woman and pulled her hair during a bar fight, police said.

German national team captain Lothar Matthaeus said he will leave Bayern Munich at the end of the year to join the New York/New Jersey MetroStars of Major League Soccer. . . . Nicolas Escude of France upset fourth-seeded Younes El Aynaoui of Morocco, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (7-5), in Kremlin Cup tennis at Moscow. . . . Top-seeded Thomas Enqvist of Sweden beat Fernando Vicente of Spain, 6-0, 6-1, in the Stockholm Open. . . . Twelfth-ranked Anna Kournikova of Russia lost to 70th-ranked Justine Henin of Belgium, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4, in the Advanta Championships at Villanova, Pa.