Tomba Wins in Slalom Again

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Alberto Tomba, approaching his top form again, won his third consecutive World Cup slalom race Sunday.

Tomba, the runner-up in Saturday’s giant slalom, was timed in 1 minute, 41.05 seconds, for the slalom in Flachau, Austria.

Mario Reiter of Austria, who led Tomba by .36 seconds after the first run, finished second at 1:41.25.

Third was Jure Kosir of Slovenia at 1:41.45.

With 47 career World Cup victories, Tomba trails only Ingemar Stenmark. The Swede had 86 wins.

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After 12 years on the ski circuit, Kristina Andersson of Sweden finally earned her first World Cup victory in a slalom event in Maribor, Slovenia.

Andersson was not the fastest in either run, but put together two solid times for a total of 1 minute, 45.36 seconds. She defeated Austria’s Elfi Eder--the winner of three slaloms this season--by .06 seconds.

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Fred-Boerre Lundberg of Norway won the World Cup Nordic combined at Schonach, Germany, with a time of 39.31 seconds for the 15-kilometer cross-country ski race held in pouring rain.

Lundberg was only 5.7 seconds ahead of second place Kenji Ogiwara of Japan, who faded at the end.

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Svetlana Zhurova of Russia won her sixth consecutive 500-meter speed skating race this season, finishing Sunday’s race in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 40.30 seconds.

Svetlana Fedotkina of Russia won the women’s 1,000; Manabu Horii and Yasunore Miyabe, both of Japan, tied for first in the men’s 5000 in 36.73 and Miyabe won the 1,000 in 1:16.80.

Tennis

Petr Korda of the Czech Republic defeated Younes el-Aynaoui of Morocco, 7-6 (7-5), 2-6, 7-6 (7-5), to win the Qatar Open in Doha, Qatar.

It was the 27-year-old Czech’s seventh title and came only three months after a hernia operation to repair a nagging groin injury.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia defeated Byron Black of Zimbabwe, 7-6, (7-0), 3-6, 6-1, in the final of the $328,000 Australian Hardcourt tennis championships in Adelaide, Australia.

Miscellany

German soccer clubs agreed to a “voluntary” limit of three foreign players in each game as a way of circumventing a European Court of Justice ruling.

The European Court of Justice ruled last month that limits on the number of foreign players were illegal. The German Bundesliga limits each team to three foreigners plus two who are long-time German residents.

Germany upset Russia in the women’s European Olympic volleyball final in Bremen, Germany, becoming the fifth nation to qualify for the right to play in the Olympics in Atlanta this summer.

The Germans defeated the favored Russian team, 4-15, 15-9, 15-5, 8-15, 16-14.

Canadian Bruny Surin and Cheryl Brantle of Boston set meet records in the 55-meter dashes at the Dartmouth Relays in Hanover, N.H.

Surin broke his 1993 mark of 6.17 seconds by winning his semifinal heat in 6.15. Surin then won the final in 6.16.

Brantle won the women’s final in 6.93, breaking her 1993 meet record of 6.95.

The anticipation of a heavy snowstorm that was scheduled for the East Coast forced cancellation of racing at Aqueduct in New York.