Buhl Goes With the Flow in IRL

Robbie Buhl took advantage of slow-moving traffic that blocked leader Eddie Cheever two laps from the end Saturday and won the Delphi Indy 200, the season-opening race in the Indy Racing League at Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Buhl started 22nd in the 26-car field at Walt Disney World Speedway and won for the second time.

Buhl was second, about a half-second behind, when the front-running trio of Cheever, Buhl and Buddy Lazier encountered heavy traffic on the narrow, one-mile tri-oval.

Cheever, the two-time and defending champion, was forced outside and Buhl’s G Force-Aurora sped past. Lazier also got past the faltering Cheever.

Buhl, who averaged 102.292 mph in the race slowed by eight caution flags, finished 3.165 seconds ahead Lazier’s Riley & Scott-Aurora. Cheever, also in a Riley & Scott, powered by the only Infiniti engine in the race, wound up third.

Boxing

Last-minute substitute Ezra Sellers scored a first-round heavyweight knockout over Nestor Giovannini at Atlantic City, N.J.

Russian junior-middleweight Roman Karmarzin ran his unbeaten streak to 26, stopping Anthony Fields in the second round of a scheduled 10-rounder.

Germany’s Markus Beyer knocked out Leif Keiski with a body shot in the seventh round to retain his World Boxing Council super-middleweight title at Riesa, Germany.

Track and Field

Johnny Gray, 39, battled back from sixth place and kicked past the field in the D.C. Invitational at Fairfax, Va., to win the 800 meters in one minute, 49.38 seconds.

Allen Johnson rebounded from an injury-plagued season and renewed his rivalry with Mark Crear by winning the 60-meter hurdles in 7.59. Crear clocked 7.65.

Carlette Guidry scored an upset in the women’s 60 in 7.27 in a race marred by three false starts. Race favorite Inger Miller finished third.

Bruny Surin won the 60 meters in 6.53 seconds at the Karlsruhe, Germany, indoor meet and 1996 Olympic champion Donovan Bailey finished sixth.

Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey dropped out under pressure from international and German track officials after testing positive for the banned substance Nandrolone.

Winter Sports

Hermann Maier of Austria, competing on the slope where his spectacular career began at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, won a World Cup downhill for the 26th time, matching a national record set by countryman Franz Klammer.

Maier is tied with Klammer for sixth place in World Cup victories, and still has quite a way to catch the overall record of 86 held by Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden.

Finland outjumped everyone and cruised to the gold medal in the Nordic combined team event in the World Junior Championships at Strbske Pleso, Slovakia, but the United States came from eighth after jumping to collect the silver medal. . . . Canada’s Jeremy Wotherspoon and the Netherlands’ Jakkojan Leeuwangh set world speedskating records at the Olympic Oval at Calgary, Canada. Wotherspoon smashed his world record in the 500 meters, clocking 34.63 seconds. Leeuwangh set the record in the 1,500 with a time of 1:45.56, shaving nearly a second off the mark of 1:46.43 set by Norway’s Adne Sondral in 1998 at the Oval. . . . Switzerland’s Reto Goetschi won the final two-man bobsled event of the season at St. Moritz, Switzerland, but countryman Christian Reich earned the overall title with 224 points to Goetschi’s 209. . . . Yugo Tsukita became the first Japanese skier to win a World Cup men’s dual moguls event, defeating Canada’s Stephane Rochon at Madarao, Japan. . . . Sylke Otto earned her fourth victory this season in the women’s single luge at Igls, Austria, as Germany swept the top four spots. Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch of Germany won the men’s doubles.

Miscellany

The New York Mets have reached an agreement in principle with Garth Brooks, allowing the country singer to participate in spring training at Port St. Lucie, Fla. . . . Met reliever Turk Wendell was rescued after spending the night stranded in the snowy Rocky Mountain foothills 30 miles outside of Denver. Wendell and his guide, Jeff Parise, who had been mountain lion hunting, were dehydrated but in good condition when found by a search team, police said. . . . The U.S. men’s basketball team will play China in its opening game of the Olympic tournament. The United States is in a pool with Italy, France, Lithuania, China and New Zealand. The U.S. women will open against South Korea and are in a pool with Russia, New Zealand, South Korea, Poland and Cuba. . . . The United States will be without a women’s three-meter synchronized diving team at the Olympics after the duo of Tracy Bonner and Kathy Pesek finished 10th in the Diving World Cup at Sydney, Australia. The top seven teams advanced.

After a fall off the beam, Elise Ray finished with a flourish, scoring a 9.75 on the floor exercise to beat Australia’s Allana Slater by less than a 10th of a point in the Aussie Haircare Gymnastics Invitational at St. Petersburg, Fla. Ray finished with 38.187 points to Slater’s 38.112.

Texas A&M;’s leading rusher, sophomore fullback Ja’Mar Toombs, was arrested early Saturday by College Station police and charged with driving while intoxicated.