Armstrong Says 2005 Tour Might Be His Last One

Lance Armstrong, a five-time winner of the Tour de France, said he plans to compete in cycling’s biggest event two more times.

Armstrong said the 2005 race probably will be his last, although he left open the possibility of competing after that.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do in 2006,” the 31-year-old Texas native said during a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington. “But there are no promises, no pressure and no stress related to that.”

Armstrong overcame testicular cancer to win his first Tour de France in 1999. He has won every Tour since, and next July will try to become the first rider to win the event six times.

Basketball

The WNBA has made three rules changes, including widening the lane and extending the three-point line.

The lane will increase from 12 feet to 16 feet wide, matching the NBA’s size.

The women’s league will move its three-point line to 20 feet, 6 1/4 inches from the basket, the distance used under international rules. That’s 9 1/4 inches farther from the basket than the old 19-9. The NBA three-point line is 23-9 from the basket.

The 30-second clock will be reset to 20 seconds instead of 30 when a defensive foul or violation occurs with fewer than 20 seconds left on a possession. Above 20 seconds, the clock will not be changed.

“The intent behind these changes is to increase our teams’ offensive productivity,” said Tracy Ellis-Ward, the league’s director of basketball operations.

“Increasing the width of the lane and the length of the three-point line are both designed to clear out space in the post so that offensive players will have greater freedom of movement.”

WNBA teams averaged 68.1 points a game last season, a half-point increase from the previous year.

Jurisprudence

As expected, Championship Auto Racing Teams filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization as part of a buyout that would continue the open-wheeled car racing series but eventually phase out the CART name.

CART filed for reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Tuesday, one day after the league’s board of directors approved the buyout offer from Open Wheel Racing Series LLC.

Open Wheel Racing announced a separate deal Wednesday to acquire the Trans-Am Racing series from a subsidiary of the Sports Car Club of America, based in Topeka, Kan. The price for the Trans-Am series was not disclosed.

Miscellany

Two-time major champion Lleyton Hewitt plans to skip next summer’s Athens Olympics because the tennis competition is too close to the U.S. Open.

The Olympic tournament will be played Aug. 15-22, with the U.S. Open starting eight days later in New York.

“The big thing is when we had the Sydney Olympics in 2000, it was after all the four majors had been played,” Hewitt told Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper. “Athens is being held right before the U.S. Open and it’s got the same feeling as the Atlanta Olympics when a lot of guys were missing because it was just so close before the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Olympic Committee should halt decertification proceedings against the U.S. Taekwondo Union because the decision was based on an anti-Korean sentiment and proper procedures were not followed, according to a USTU report obtained by Associated Press.

The report, sent to the USOC’s executive committee last weekend, said the USOC no longer has the jurisdiction to strip USTU of its Olympic charter because it didn’t adhere to its own bylaws. It also said anti-Korean bias was the reason the USOC turned down a compromise between lawyers on both sides last month.

The report was in response to a USOC complaint that recommended USTU be dropped as the governing body of taekwondo in the United States and lose the ability to select the U.S. team for the 2004 Athens Games.

Lawyers for the USOC and USTU reached a compromise last month, but the USOC’s executive committee turned it down because it allowed for president Sang Lee to remain with the organization in a lesser capacity.

Lightweight Edwin Valero (11-0, 11 knockouts) of Venezuela will meet Thomas Zambrano (16-5, 8) of Mexico in a scheduled 10-round fight as the main event of a five-bout card at the Irvine Marriott tonight.

Also on the card are featherweight Edgar Vargas (4-0) of Santa Ana and female junior-flyweight Wendy Rodriguez (11-2-3, 1) of Los Angeles.

James Lewis, a senior wide receiver at Venice, was selected City Section player of the year by a panel of coaches.

Lewis caught 63 passes for 1,254 yards and 16 touchdowns in leading the Gondoliers to the City championship game.

Carson senior Chet Sanders was selected as defensive player of the year, and Venice senior Byron Ellis was named offensive player of the year.

Carson’s John Aguirre was selected coach of the year.

Austria’s Nicole Hosp was the fastest skier in both runs and won her first World Cup slalom race at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy.

Hosp finished with a combined time of 1 minute 37.97 seconds on the steep Canalone Miramonti course, 0.29 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Anja Paerson.

Passings

Walter Keller, a Brentwood resident who coached golfer Amy Alcott to a Hall of Fame career on the LPGA Tour, has died after complications from pneumonia. He was 95.