Eberharter Scores First Downhill Win

Stephan Eberharter raced to his first World Cup downhill victory Saturday, taking the spotlight away from Austrian teammate Hermann Maier at Lake Louise, Canada.

Eberharter finished in 1 minute 40.79 seconds. Switzerland’s Silvano Beltrametti was second, 0.24 seconds behind. Norway’s Lasse Kjus was third in 1:41.21.

“I waited many, many years for this,” Eberharter said. “It was a great day for me.”

Eberharter had previously won a super-giant slalom and three giant slalom races in World Cup events.

Maier, the dominating downhill and super-G racer, finished 15th in 1:42.01. He lost his balance and nearly crashed after catching an edge near the finish line.

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Janica Kostelic of Croatia captured her second consecutive women’s World Cup slalom, beating Germany’s Martina Ertl by a comfortable .84 seconds at Aspen, Colo.

Kostelic, 18, also won the season-opening slalom last week in Park City, Utah, defeating Ertl by 1.73 seconds.

Kostelic, skiing less than a year after tearing four ligaments in her right knee while training in Switzerland, led Slovenia’s Spela Pretnar by .73 of a second after Saturday’s first run.

Kostelic, skiing last, began the second run with a 1.04-second advantage on Ertl.

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Three-time world champion Alexei Yagudin of Russia overcame flu and scored three 6.0s to win the men’s singles title at the Lalique Trophy figure skating event in Paris.

Former world champion Maria Butyrskaya of Russia took the women’s championship and U.S. teenager Jennifer Kirk finished third.

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Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann of Germany set a World Cup speedskating record in the women’s 5,000 meters with a time of 6 minutes, 55.34 seconds at Heerenveen, Netherlands. Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands won the men’s 1,500. . . . Roar Ljoekelsoy led Norway to victory in the season’s first team event in the ski jumping World Cup at Kuopio, Finland. . . . Germans dominated at the Luge World Cup in Sigulda, Latvia, with Steffen Skel and Steffen Woller winning the men’s doubles and Olympic champion Silke Kraushaar taking the women’s singles.

Tennis

Thomas Johansson, who reached the final of the 1998 Stockholm Open, beat top-seeded Magnus Norman, 7-6 (4), 6-2, in an all-Swedish semifinal of the event.

Johansson, who lost the championship match to Todd Martin two years ago, will play second-seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia in the best-of-five-set final today.

Kafelnikov advanced without playing the semifinal, getting a walkover when Sebastien Grosjean pulled out after the death of his grandmother in France.

Showing no signs of fatigue after his quarterfinal win over Jonas Bjorkman that last nearly three hours, the unseeded Johansson took complete command after winning a tight opening set 7-4 in the tiebreaker.

Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia yielded only one game to Wimbledon semifinalist Vladimir Voltchkov of Belarus to cruise into the final of the Samsung Open at Brighton, England. Hrbaty’s 6-1, 6-0 victory means he will meet top-seeded Tim Henman of Britain, who needed a little more than an hour to beat South Korea’s Lee Hjung-Taik 6-2, 6-1. Hrbaty broke Voltchkov at love in the second game of the match and went up two breaks when his opponent double faulted in the fourth game. Voltchkov finally held serve for 5-1 but didn’t win another game.

Miscellany

Bottles and rocks thrown onto players and fans forced officials to end the soccer match between South Africa and Nigeria in the African Women’s Championship at Vosloorus, South Africa, with Nigeria winning, 2-0. Riot police arrived about 40 minutes after the disturbance began and fired tear gas to quell the crowd. No arrests were reported.