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SPORTS


July 29, 1996

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By RICK WARNER

AP Sports Writer


ATLANTA, July 29 (AP) - Carl Lewis jumped for survival and Charles
Austin jumped for joy. Michael Johnson cruised and Butch Reynolds
hobbled. The Dream Team gave Croatia the basketball blues, and the
Cubans gave the United States its first baseball beating.

Greece won its first gymnastics medal since the modern games began 100
years ago and Amy Chow gave the United States its first individual
gymnastics medal of these games, a silver on the uneven bars.

In a jampacked day of Olympic competition Sunday, nothing was more
dramatic than Lewis' last leap. Needing a big effort to make the finals
and keep alive his bid for a fourth straight gold medal in the long
jump, Lewis soared 27 feet, 2½ inches - the longest leap of the
qualifying rounds.

``I had to tell myself, this is the last meet of your life. Do you want
it to end like this?'' Lewis said.

Lewis jumped only 26-0¼ on his first attempt and fouled on his second.
That left him in 15th place going into his final jump, and only 12
advance to the final.

But that all changed in a few breathtaking seconds. Following his clutch
leap, Lewis bounded out of the pit and celebrated by pumping his right
arm in the air.

``It brought out the best in me,'' he said of the pressure.

Lewis was going for the gold today along with teammates Mike Powell and
Joe Greene. Winning would tie him with swimmer Mark Spitz for most golds
by an American athlete (nine), and he would join discus thrower Al
Oerter as the only track and field athletes to win the same event in
four straight Olympics.

In another highly anticipated final today, Johnson will try to complete
half of a historic 200-400 double when he competes in the 400 meters.
Other track and field golds were at stake in the men's 110 hurdles and
10,000 meters, plus the women's discus, 400, 800 and 10-kilometer walk.

Golds also will be awarded in men's springboard diving and the last five
individual gymnastic events. In team competition, the United States was
to play China in a softball semifinal, Bulgaria in men's volleyball and
South Korea in women's basketball.

Johnson breezed to victory in his 400 semifinal heat Sunday. But
Reynolds, the world record-holder and silver medalist in 1988, pulled up
with cramps in both hamstrings.

Reynolds, who has spent years trying to clear his name after a drug
suspension, tried to run in the semis even though his hamstrings had
bothered him in the preliminary rounds.

``I believe in miracles,'' said Reynolds, who still hopes to run in the
1,600 relay on Saturday. ``That's why I had to go for it. At least I
know in my mind I did go for that individual gold.''

Austin won the men's high jump and set an Olympic record at 7-10. He is
the first American to win the event at the Olympics since Dick Fosbury -
inventor of the ``Fosbury Flop'' technique - in 1968.

Lance Deal helped the United States end a 40-year medal drought in the
hammer throw. Mired in eighth place, he captured the silver with a final
throw of 266-2.

While the Dream Team crushed Croatia 102-71 in a rematch of the 1992
Olympic final, the U.S. baseball team lost to Cuba 10-8 in a battle of
unbeaten teams.

After falling behind 10-2 in the preliminary round game, the Americans
rallied with four homers. But Cuba held on to win what could be a
preview of the gold medal game.

``It was a ballgame that was worthy of this Olympics,'' Cuban coach
Jorge Fuentes said. ``There were two teams with more than 200 years of
baseball tradition and a desire to give a great spectacle like we put
on.''

In gymnastics, Ioannis Melissanidis won the floor exercise to give
Greece its first medal in that sport since the Athens Games in 1896.

``Before I saluted the judges, I said to myself, `I'm not in the United
States, I'm not in Atlanta, I'm in Athens,''' Melissanidis said. ``I was
not Ioannis Melissanidis. I was Greece.''

Chow tied for silver on the uneven bars, and teammate Dominique Dawes
finished fourth on the uneven bars. But Dawes and Shannon Miller both
performed poorly on the vault.

Miller was a last-minute replacement in the vault for Kerri Strug, who
decided to rest her injured left ankle and save her strength for today's
floor exercise finals.

The U.S. women's soccer team reached the gold medal game with a dramatic
2-1 overtime victory over Norway. The Americans meet China on Thursday
in the first women's soccer final.

Antonio Tarver joined six of his U.S. boxing teammates in the
quarterfinals by stopping David Kowah of Sierra Leone in the first round
of their light heavyweight bout.

Tarver's victory was the first boxing match of the games to be televised
live by NBC.

``It was the first chance we get to have 15 minutes of television time
and we get only four minutes,'' said U.S. coach Al Mitchell, who has
criticized the network for not showing enough boxing.

In an All-American beach volleyball final, Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes
rolled to a 12-5, 12-8 victory over Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh to win
the sport's first Olympic gold. Kiraly, part of the winning U.S. indoor
teams in 1984 and 1988, is the first volleyball player to win three
Olympic golds.

The U.S. women's volleyball team beat South Korea to clinch second in
its pool. The Americans will play defending champion Cuba in the
quarterfinals.

There was a wild scene at the tennis venue, where several hundred angry
fans protested an attempt to move Andre Agassi's doubles match from the
stadium to an adjacent court. The plan was scrapped after the fans
booed, chanted and appeared to ready to storm the gates.

``I'm shellshocked,'' said tournament referee Ken Farrar. ``I actually
never thought there would be such a riotous situation develop.''

Two Russians were stripped of their bronze medals for failing drug
tests.

Swimmer Andrei Korneyev and Greco-Roman wrestler Zafar Gulyov tested
positive for the stimulant bromantan. Lithuanian cyclist Rita Raznaite,
who didn't win a medal, also was disqualified for using the same
substance.

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