From 37th Spot, Burton Wins Race

Ward Burton, who started 37th, passed Bobby Labonte with seven laps to go and went on to win a wild Southern 500 at Darlington, S.C., Sunday and end a 53-race victory drought.

“All my heroes, particularly Bobby Allison, made the Southern 500 a tradition and I’m just happy to be a part of it,” said Burton, who won the race under caution after a wreck with two laps to go.

This hadn’t been one of Burton’s best seasons since switching from Pontiac to Dodge. He had placed in the top ten just five times in 24 events until Darlington.

And things looked bad for Burton Friday. He needed a provisional to make the field.

However, Burton passed 20 cars over the first 30 laps, and kept on charging until the late pass. Burton moved past Labonte as Jimmy Spencer, Joe Nemechek and Ron Hornaday tangled in a wreck that brought out the last of 12 cautions.

“I don’t know if I was the best driver, but I sure had the best race car,” Burton said.

After a red-flag delay of more than eight minutes to clean up crash debris, Burton withstood the final shootout for his third career Winston Cup victory. It brought Dodge its first Darlington victory since Buddy Baker won the 1971 Rebel 400.

Jeff Gordon passed Labonte to take second. Gordon was in front 37 laps from the end, but said he hit the wall in turn two when battling Labonte for the lead down the stretch. Tony Stewart bounced off a last-lap pileup to finish behind Labonte.

Steve Park was recovering from a frightening crash in Saturday’s South Carolina 200 Busch Race and remained in the hospital with dizziness.

Jaques Lazier won the Delphi Indy 300 at Jolieth, Ill., his first IRL victory, by holding off Sam Hornish Jr., whose runner-up finish earned him the season championship.

At 22, Hornish became the youngest driver to win a major open-wheel series championship in North America.

Lazier, in his second race for Team Menard, passed rookie Felipe Giaffone with 25 laps left and led the rest of the way.

Giaffone, who challenged throughout the 200-lap race, blew his engine with two laps left while in third place, and that cleared the way for Hornish to finish second.

Miscellany

Olympic skier Hermann Maier can’t remember details of the motorcycle accident that left him with a broken leg and put his career in jeopardy.

Maier, undergoing treatment in the intensive care unit of a Salzburg, Austria hospital, spoke to the media for the first time since his crash 10 days ago.

“The most important thing is that I am on the road to recovery and that I am alive,” Maier said.

Doctors have been reluctant to speculate whether Maier--who won two gold medals at the 1998 Olympics--will be able to race again.

“When it is possible for me to make a comeback, then I’ll certainly be back as strong as I was before,” he said.

Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco won the 1,500-meter race at the Rieti Grand Prix at Rieti, Italy, but was unable to break his world record. He dominated a race run under perfect conditions but was 3.08 seconds short of the mark of 3 minutes 26 seconds he set in Rome in 1998.

Abdul Zakari of Ghana won the 100 meters in 10.4 seconds. Troy Douglas of the Netherlands won the 200 in 20.19, ahead of Uchenna Emedolu of Nigeria and Darvis Patton of the U.S.

Peja Stojakovic of the Sacramento Kings scored a game-high 22 points, including five three-point baskets, as Yugoslavia defeated Germany, 86-73, to reach the European Basketball Championship quarterfinals at Antalya, Turkey.

Dallas Maverick forward Dirk Nowitzki scored just four points for Germany by halftime and finished with 15 when he fouled out midway through the fourth.

Passings

Lawrence “Crash” Davis, the minor league baseball player made famous by the movie “Bull Durham,” died Friday in Durham, N.C. after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 82. Davis was a baseball standout and successful coach long before the 1988 movie about a longtime minor league catcher thrust his name back into the limelight.