Longley Injures Right Knee

Australian center Luc Longley, traded from the Phoenix Suns to the New York Knicks during the Olympics, will be out at least eight weeks because of a knee injury.

Longley did not play for the home country in the bronze-medal game Saturday against Lithuania.

The 7-foot-2 Longley injured his right knee late in Australia’s semifinal loss to France. An MRI Saturday revealed a slight ligament tear, team doctor Peter Harcourt said.

Longley was part of a four-team, 12-player trade in which Patrick Ewing went from the Knicks to the Seattle SuperSonics.

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Weightlifting took another drug hit when the International Olympic Committee said the Armenian bronze medalist in the heavyweight division had tested positive for steroids. Two other non-medalists also tested positive for drugs.

The IOC stripped lifter Ashot Danielyan of his medal.

Danielyan, who lifted a total of 1,025 pounds, tested positive for nandrolone after his competition Tuesday, the final day of weightlifting.

He was the fourth weightlifter to test positive at the Games, but the first from a country other than Bulgaria. The International Weightlifting Federation expelled the Bulgarian team from the Games, although a member of the team later was allowed to compete under an arbitration court ruling.

IOC medical commission chairman Prince Alexander de Merode said a Greco-Roman wrestler, Fritz Aanes of Norway, also tested positive for nandrolone after losing a bronze-medal match Wednesday.

De Merode also formally announced that Russian 400-meter runner Svetlana Pospelova tested positive for the steroid stanozolol in an out-of-competition test at the Games.

A total of eight athletes have tested positive in Sydney, with more than 50 others caught in tests around the world before the Olympics.

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International water polo officials suspended Italy’s coach, Ratko Rudic, a year from any FINA events for his angry display after his team lost to Hungary in the quarterfinals.

FINA officials met at the Sydney International Aquatic Center on Saturday. In a statement, they said that Rudic was disciplined for “having brought the sport of water polo in disrepute.”

Rudic, who won golds with Yugoslavia in 1984 and 1988 and with Italy in 1992, chased the officials after the game and was arguing so loudly a uniformed officer stepped between him and the scorer’s table at the Ryde Aquatic Leisure Center.

In a post-game conference, Rudic accused officials of conspiring against his team.

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Fewer and fewer people are tuning in to NBC’s Olympics coverage, with the 15th night of taped telecasts drawing the lowest rating yet by a large margin.

Friday night’s program, which included Marion Jones competing in the long jump and the U.S. basketball team’s two-point semifinal victory over Lithuania, pulled in a 10.6 rating and 20 share measured from 7:30 p.m. to midnight.

That’s 15% lower than the previous worst nightly rating for these Olympics (Tuesday’s 12.4), 35% lower than what advertisers were promised (16.1), and 40-43% lower than NBC Sports predicted its programs would get (17.5 to 18.5).

Meanwhile, shifting from its policy of not showing anything live, NBC aired the men’s basketball gold-medal game between the U.S. and France as it happened.

The network originally planned to show the game with the shortest tape-delay of these Games--about 20 minutes--but switched gears a few hours before the tipoff (at 1:15 p.m. today in Sydney, 7:15 p.m. Saturday on the West Coast).

The game was shown live in the Eastern and Central time zones. Viewers in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, though, were to see the game on tape during their prime times.

“This decision had nothing to do with the debate over live versus taped,” NBC Sports Vice President Kevin Sullivan said. “The decision was made today when it became apparent it would work and the opportunity was there.