Jarrett, Irvan Finish One-Two at Brickyard

Dale Jarrett passed Ernie Irvan seven laps from the end of the 160-lap Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Saturday and held on to win the race and stir up NASCAR’s Winston Cup championship battle.

“He went a little high and a little hard into that corner,” Jarrett said of Irvan. “My car was a little better out front.”

Jarrett, who earlier this season won the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600, averaged 139.528 mph in the race that lasted 2 hours, 52 minutes, .476 seconds. His win was worth more than $500,000 from a purse of $4.7 million.

Once he had taken the lead, Jarrett quickly moved out to a six-car-length margin over his Robert Yates Racing teammate. He appeared to have things well in hand when Robert Pressley’s car hit the wall on lap 159 and brought out the last of five cautions.

That’s the way the race ended, with the crowd of about 300,000 standing and cheering. The Yates crew crowded around the wall separating the race track from the pits, waving and celebrating as the Ford Thunderbirds of Jarrett and Irvan drove under the flagstand slowly behind the pace car.

“I always watched the races here at Indianapolis and it’s a tremendous feeling to be in this Victory Lane,” he said. “The history of this place makes this a very special race.”

Irvan finished second and Terry Labonte third.

Tennis

Spain’s Francisco Clavet, seeded sixth, reached today’s title match of the $474,000 Grolsch Open at Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Romania’s Adrian Voinea.

Clavet, winner of the event in 1990, will play Younes El Aynaoui of Morocco in the final. Aynaoui defeated Holland’s Dennis van Scheppingen, 6-3, 6-7 (7-5), 6-2, in the other semifinal.

Horse Racing

Continentalvictory become the first filly to win the Hambletonian in 13 years, holding off a late charge by favored Lindy Lane to win trotting’s most prestigious race, at East Rutherford, N.J.

Trained by Ron Gurfein and driven by Mike Lachance, Continentalvictory trotted the mile in a stakes-record 1:52 4/5, breaking the old Hambletonian mark of 1:53 2/5 set by American Winner in 1993.

Last year’s 2-year-old filly champion thus became the first filly to win the first two legs of the trotter’s Triple Crown. She is bidding to be the first Triple Crown winner since Super Bowl in 1972.

Continentalvictory, the first filly to win the Hambletonian since Duenna in 1983, won the Triple Crown’s first leg, the Yonkers Trot, on July 6. She will race the the final leg, the Kentucky Futurity at Lexington, on Oct. 4.

In the elimination heats, Continentalvictory tied a world record, winning in 1:52 1/5. That time broke the 3-year-old filly record of 1:52 4/5, held by Peace Corps and CR Kay Suzie. It tied Mack Lobell’s record for the fastest mile by any 3-year-old.

A judge in White Plains, N.Y. threw out grand larceny charges against harness race driver Herve Filion and four other men after ruling that the charges did not fit the crimes with which they were charged.

Westchester County Judge Kenneth Lange issued a 10-page ruling rejecting the prosecution’s theory that grand larceny was involved because more than $200,000 in losing wagers were placed on races that were allegedly fixed.

The five men still face lesser charges of conspiracy and sports tampering. They had been accused of an elaborate scheme to fix races at Yonkers Raceway.