This Really Doesn’t Help Build Bridges

It had to happen sooner or later. Disa Eythorsdottir, a member of the U.S. bridge team in the world championships at Montreal, has been stripped of her silver medal because she refused to take a post-competition urine test.

Organizers said drug testing was being done because bridge was up for consideration as an Olympic sport. Eythorsdottir, a six-time North American champion, said no, on principle.

“Like what could I take to enhance my performance -- smart pills?” she said.

“It’s ridiculous. Anyone who had four cups of coffee couldn’t pass that drug test. A lot of old people play bridge, and they are on all kinds of medicines. What does any of this have to do with bridge?”

Said the Seattle Times: “Worst of all, how do we break the news to our kids that their bridge-playing heroes might be tainted?”

Trivia time: Who won the first Winternationals drag race at Pomona in 1961?

Taste of victory: Jeremy McGrath won more than twice as many supercross events as any other rider.

Asked what kept him going, he said, “Winning is like a box of chocolates. Each one keeps on getting sweeter.”

Fast start: Ernie Els was 47 strokes under par after the first two PGA events. Last year it took him until the British Open in July to get that far under par.

Full of it: The death of snooker legend Bill Werbeniuk in Vancouver on Monday brings to mind some stories about the former North American champion.

He said he drank 10 beers before picking up a cue in competition to help control a nerve disorder and once split open his pants on television during a match.

Affirmative action: After the death of Hugh Culverhouse, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneer owner, his wife accused him of taking money from the team’s payroll to buy expensive gifts for his girlfriends.

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Ron Rapoport recalls that Joy Culverhouse once said, “I’d like to take him out of his grave and shoot him three times.”

Asian influence: Now that baseball and basketball have benefited from Japanese and Chinese athletes, soccer wants in. Bayern Munich of Germany has opened an ambitious marketing expansion into Asia in hopes of signing an outstanding Japanese player.

“We will decide in the next three or four weeks into which Asian market we will go first,” said club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “We’d like a Japanese superstar.”

Remembering: Frank Layden, who later coached the Utah Jazz, attended high school in Brooklyn. When a reporter asked him how tough the school was, Layden said, “We had nicknames like Scarface and Toothless -- and those were just the cheerleaders.”

Trivia answer: Jack Chrisman, in a 2-Chevy dragster, won with a speed of 170.13 mph.

And finally: From Burt Graeff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The Cavaliers are arguably the worst collection of defenders in the NBA. They reach, they grab, they do not rotate, cannot handle simple pick-and-roll situations and do not communicate.”

Anything else, Burt?