Martin Races to Victory, Gordon Loses Points Lead

Mark Martin pulled away from the field late in the Dura-Lube/Big Kmart 400 at North Carolina Speedway, beating perennial Rockingham runner-up Dale Jarrett to the finish by about 12 car-lengths Sunday.

After Jeff Gordon’s engine blew on the 311th of 393 laps, the battle fell to Martin, Jarrett, Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte.

Martin, a distant runner-up to Gordon in last year’s points race, took control after his Roush Racing crew moved him from second to first during a yellow-flag pit stop on lap 357.

The victory was the 30th of Martin’s career. He won $104,635 after averaging 120.750 mph.

Gordon, who won the last two races of 1998 and the season-opening Daytona 500, lost the points lead along with his winning streak. Mike Skinner, who finished sixth Sunday, holds a 29-point lead over Rusty Wallace, who finished 10th.

Olympics

Sergio Santander, the Chilean International Olympic Committee member implicated in the bribery scandal, intends to resign today as president of his country’s national Olympic committee, a Chilean newspaper reported.

Santander has acknowledged receiving $4,700 from Tom Welch, former president of the Salt Lake City bid organizers, but he called it a personal contribution to his unsuccessful political campaign to run for Chilean Congress in 1993.

Tennis

Germany’s Tommy Haas won an ATP title for the first time, beating an injured Jim Courier, 6-4, 6-1, in the $700,000 St. Jude Indoor championship at Memphis, Tenn. Courier played despite spraining his left foot in the semifinals.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov beat Tim Henman, 6-2, 7-6 (7-3), to win the $850,000 ABN AMRO tournament at Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Top-seeded Jana Novotna rallied from a 1-3 first-set deficit to defeat Venus Williams, 6-4, 6-4, in the final of the $500,000 WTA tournament at Hanover, Germany.

The UCLA men’s team defeated Illinois, 4-1, at Seattle to win its fifth USTA/ITA national team indoor championship in the 1990s and sixth overall.

Miscellany

Larry Nelson had an eagle and two birdies on the back nine to beat Bruce Fleisher by two strokes and win the Senior PGA’s GTE Classic at Lutz, Fla., with a 54-hole total of eight-under 205. . . . Former major league baseball pitcher Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell died at High Point, N.C.. He was 68. . . .The deal to bring the New England Patriots to Hartford, Conn., includes expenses that were not part of the legislative spending bill, including up to $750,000 to relocate the team. . . . Germany’s Antje Buschschulte completed a sweep of the women’s backstroke events at the World Cup swimming meet at Paris, winning the 100-meter race in 1 minute, .06 seconds. . . . German ski jumper Martin Schmitt leaped 129.5 meters off the 120-meter hill in the second series to win in the Nordic Ski World Championship at Bischofshofen, Austria. . . . Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie fell short in his attempt to break the 3,000-meter world indoor record, winning in 7 minutes, 31.27 seconds at a meet in Lievin, France. . . . Mike Tyson had been taken off the antidepressant drug Zoloft two days before the Friday incident in which he threw a TV set against some bars in a Maryland jail, a source close to the fighter told the Associated Press. The medication was stopped after Tyson refused to let a prison psychologist examine him.