The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 16

Injured Mears hands keys to Tracy ill iSiiiBi ILE PHOTO GETTING HIS HOMETOWN CHANCE: West Hill race driver Paul Tracy makes his debut In the Molson Indy race at Exhibition Place on Sunday ILE PHOTO A VETERAN YIELDS: Rick Mears hurt his wrist during practice for the Indy 500 In May and because it completely healed he be In the Molson indy race wrist a chance to be close to said Penske team manager Chuck Sprague means be strong for the Michigan 500 miler a race where always in contention But after what Paul did at Detroit in car our team will be a two car threat in Emerson ittipaldi and Tracy will be in the MarlboroPenske cars here and will be joined by Mears in a three car effort at Michigan The most successful organization in IndyCar racing the Penske team has not had its greatest season in Practice and race crashes in May damaged five chassis severely and the cars had to be returned to the factory in England to be rebuilt had another car crashed in New Hampshire but when we By rank Orr TORONTO STAR Rick Mears is out but Paul Tracy is in a bad newsgood news situation for the Molson Indy race in the PPG IndyCar World Series Sunday at Exhibition Place A longtime top contender in the IndyCar senes for Penske the veteran Mears has a sore wrist sprained in a crash during practice for the Indianapolis 500 in May Mears missed a road race at Detroit then returned for three events he was fourth at New Hampshire July 5 but complete rest is the prescribed cure to have him in top form for the 500 mile event at Michigan International Speedway Aug 2 That means Tracy from West Hill will drive Marlboro Penske 92 Chevy V8B here which makes him a strong contender in his IndyCar hometown debut Tracy subbed for Mears in the car at Detroit qualified fourth and led the race for 19 laps before dropping out because of a gearbox failure Signed by the Penske team as a test driver in the plan was to give him a heavy test schedule plus a limited number of races Mears injury has sped up the latter Tracy was a strong fourth on the mile oval at Phoenix in April and conducted himself well in his Indy 500 debut running in the top 10 just behind Scott Goodyear when his Penske failed Goodyear continued on to be second to Al Unser Jr in the closest ever 500 finish missing the Toronto race Rick (Mears) will have close to a month off which will give his have to send it across the Atlantic we almost had a Sprague added had hoped to have four chassis sorted by May 1 and we will be at the race in Toronto That means a couple of months Tracy will conduct pre race shakedowns on the cars for the Molson Indy today and tomorrow at the Nazareth Pa mile oval H'A A fc3L VZ Bb BEL m1' IV tr 1 5 Is 1 ff 4 XS3f: ta 1 4 B'" his £ref MAWeac a v' bBL Vs1VjSb gjSB i 'j 'A B4 Tuesday July 14 1992 THE TORONTO STAR Mounties brief Canadian team on Basque threat 500 strong contingent to the Olympic Games in Barcelona that starts next week nave been assured they be deliberate targets of the Basque separatist guerrillas The ETA (Basque Homeland and reedom) has killed about 750 people in a 23 year campaign for an independent Basque state 20 of them in gun and bomb attacks this year But RCMP Chief Superintendent Lowell Thomas told an briefing in Toronto yesterday Spanish police have indicated to me that the Canadian contingent will not be subjected to any direct Lowell who is the RCMP liaison officer with the Olympic team spent a week in Barcelona in April and worked with his Spanish counterparts am satisfied with the security arrangements that have been made to Erotect the athletes and they have now all een briefed on how to make their stay in Barcelona He stressed to the team members to keep away from any suspicious looking parcels as the terrorists nave been notorious for their bomb attacks Barcelona is normally patrolled by 2000 policemen but the security force will number 40000 for the Games Team grows by two: Canada will be represented by eight divers instead of six Bill Hayes of Mississauga and Anne Montminy of Pointe Claire Que included in the original party as they failed to meet certain criteria set by the Canadian diving body The two took the matter up with the supreme court and left yesterday with the rest of the team No plans to retire: Six time Olympic champion Carl Lewis plans to continue competing after the Olympics despite his disappointing form at the recent US trials The 31 year old sprinter who managed to qualify for only the long jump in the US Olympic team denied suggestions that he might retire after the Games in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published yesterday going to compete for another year yet I will retire when the moment comes when I run my best race and win any Lewis was quoted as saying The American said he believed his world 100 metre record of 986 seconds which he set at last Tokyo world championships could be broken without the use of drugs Bird to play: Larry Bird whose status as a member of the US Olympic basketball team was uncertain because of back problems is Ed Lacerte trainer for the US team and the Boston Celtics said yesterday Bird made a surprise appearance at the Celtics rookie free agent camp participated in drills and scrimmaged yesterday He left before talking with reporters but Lacerte and Dave Gavitt president of USA Basketball and senior executive vice president of the Celtics were upbeat is something that he really desperately wants to do and it looks like on track to do Gavitt said certainly looked okay out Kenyans add five: The Kenyan Olympic committee yesterday relented and added five athletes to its team who failed to qualify at the national championships in Nairobi two weeks ago On their way to Barcelona are 1988 Olympic 1500 metre gold medalist Paul Ereng Moses Tanui the 1991 world championship 10000 metre gold medalist Olympic steeplechase gold medalist Moses Kiptanui and distance runners Atoi Boru and Paul Bitok Kiptanui wants to run in the 1500 metres in Barcelona inns cry foul: The new javelin used by Jan Zelezny to set a world record breaks the rules innish experts claimed yesterday Zelezny threw 310 feet 10 inches in Oslo July 4 surpassing Steve record by 10 feet The rule of construction states that a javelin can consist of only three parts a head a shaft and a cord grip An extra tubular sheath on the javelin in question a fourth part is said to stabilize its flight The innish Track and ield Association is preparing a report on the subject to the IAA 4 Olympic Watch Norman Da Costa JE GOODETORONTO STAR 1 1" 'IrX JR! iKrY 1 1 Al MH A a LhB A IK 'fli Hr I MB bL qT Hl I 4k Sal 'A' LOOKING SHARP: encer Allan rancis towers over left: Janet Morin Mylene leury Lori Strong Stella gymnastics team as he models Olympic uniform rom Umeh Jennifer Wood Natasha Hallet Jeanlne Rankin Read a chef with gold medal mission Continued from page Bl by Silken Laumann in the single sculls Laumann has made a courageous comeback from a serious leg injury in order to compete at the Games could be quite a remark able day with the finals there (in Barcelona)" said Read While one might assume Read might be more comfortable at an Olympics where athletes are hur tling themselves down an icy precipice the former downhill great appears to have everything under control as the team gears up for Barcelona He has been overseeing things as much of the 500 strong Cana dian contingent which in cludes 312 athletes passes through the staging process at a downtown Toronto hotel As chef de mission Read sees his role as helping to instill the pride of competing for Canada in the athletes trying to build an over all team feeling and provid ing on site support in Barcelona Read also has to deal with dis cipline and drug problems His predecessor in the post Carol Anne Letheren drew the unenvi able assignment of retrieving gold medal from the sprinter after he was disqualified Read makes the rather bold claim that he is confident he have to perform a similar task because there is no one among 300 plus athletic contingent using performance enhancing drugs He said every athlete eligible for the team has been subject to testing by the Canadian Centre for Drug ree Sport In addition to the regular doping program Read said that unannounced short notice testing has been conducted widely confident (the Centre for Drug ree Sport) con fident that the team send ing over is abiding by the rules and has integrity said Read Still in what is believed to be an unprecedented move for a chef de mission Read requested some extra drug testing be done by the Centre for Drug ree Sport He said that certain sports were targeted but declined to Stein wants NHL owners to ban fighting this year WINNIPEG (CP) The interim president of the National Hock ey League thinks the league should put an end to fighting and try to persuade team owners to make the move this year Gil Stein told a news conference yesterday plenty of evidence hockey can be played as a tough physical game without players dropping their gloves He pointed to the Olympics and Canada Cup tournaments to back his view that rough entertaining hockey have to include brawling Stein added that even the later rounds of this Stanley Cup playoffs featured few fights He said urge league governors to end fighting this year lessons are he said the extent that through my powers of persuasion and the powers of my office I can provide leadership within that boardroom I will do so I think this may very well be the year hen they will see fit to make a clean break in that elaborate Sprinter Cheryl Thibedeau who did not make the Olympic team was suspended for life last week after failing two drug tests Rather than look at the Thibe deau case as an example that Ca nadian athletes are still cheating Read views it as evidence the sys tem is working When it comes to the interna tional scene hard to say whether things have really changed regarding doping Reaa is heartened by the grownng list of athletes being caught and the dismantling of the Eastern Euro pean system where doping was often part of the protocol for ath letes But he grudgingly concedes that the playing field is still tilted "Clearly more can be done no doubt about that at said Read people getting caught are evidence of that and certainly enough innuendo floating around to sug gest that there is some depth to the What Canada must ddj said Read is focus on making sure its athletes compete clean think the Canadian public and our funding sources whether they be public or private demand that we have our own house in order V1 I 1.