U.S. Olympic Festival Kicks Off In St. Louis

The U.S. Olympic Festival '94 kicked off last night in St. Louis with an old-fashioned lawn party under the Gateway Arch on the banks of the Mississippi River.

"St. Louis has gone out of its way to make sure you have a good time and that the U.S. Olympic Festival '94 goes down as the best ever," Florence Griffith-Joyner, three-time Olympic gold medalist, said in welcoming about 2,200 athletes, who with volunteers and fans crowded the grounds of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial for a two-hour show.

The festival, designed to give athletes a taste of the Olympics, featured only mixed doubles tennis yesterday. Today, the festival kicks into gear with 17 events, including boxing, basketball, figure skating, swimming and diving.

HOCKEY

Goaltender Mike Richter, who helped the New York Rangers end a 54-year Stanley Cup drought, headed a list of 108 NHL players who became eligible for free agency. Richter was included among 64 restricted free agents whose rights can be retained should their clubs match offers from others. Signing of any of those players would require compensation to their former clubs.

Another 42 players - including Bernie Nicholls of New Jersey, Al MacInnis of Calgary and Glenn Anderson of the Rangers - became unrestricted free agents. They are free to sign with any team without compensation.

BOXING

Marty Jakubowski (74-1 with 18 knockouts) won a unanimous 12-round decision over Anthony Boyle in Philadelphia to capture the vacant United States Boxing Association lightweight title.

AUTO RACING

He has the same uniform, the same starting position and - even more significant - the same car. So Sterling Marlin feels good about his chances of winning today's Pepsi 400 to complete a rare sweep of the Winston Cup races at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. Marlin won the season-opening Daytona 500 to stop a streak of 278 career starts races without a victory.

Defending champion Dale Earnhardt is on the pole for the first time at Daytona while Rusty Wallace will chase his fourth consecutive Winston Cup victory from the inside of the seventh row.

-- Rick Crawford of Mobile, Ala., set a track record in winning the pole for the NASCAR All Pro Series race at the Milwaukee Mile. Crawford, driving a Ford, lapped at 117.294 mph, fastest of the 32 drivers in the race. Today's 100-mile race is a preliminary to tomorrow's NASCAR Busch Grand National stock car race on the speedway.

-- Nigel Mansell returned to Formula 1 competition, at least temporarily, in the opening trials of French Grand Prix. He found things slower than before, finishing seventh in qualifying for tomorrow's race in 1 minute, 18.340 seconds, averaging 121.380 mph. Michael Schumacher, who has won five of the first six races this year, gained the provisional pole with a lap of 1:17.085, averaging 123.36 mph on the 2.641-mile circuit.

BASKETBALL

La'Keshia Frett, a sophomore from the University of Georgia, scored 18 points to lead the unbeaten USA to a 77-57 victory over Korea in the Jones Cup women's tournament in Taipei, Taiwan.

MISCELLANY

Jerry Stovall, athletic director at Louisiana Tech since 1990, is leaving to take a job as president and chief executive officer of the Baton Rouge Area Sports Foundation. He was also an All-American football player at LSU and the school's football coach from 1980-1983.

-- World and Olympic champion Linford Christie narrowly maintained his unbeaten record for 1994 when he won a Gateshead (England) International 100-meter race in which the top four finishers were separated by a mere .01 seconds. Christie actually recorded the same time, 10.46 seconds, as 200-meter world champion Frankie Fredericks, but got the decision in a photo finish.

LOCAL NOTES

-- Sisters Betsy and Mary McCagg of Kirkland were named to the women's eights in rowing for the national team which will compete at the Goodwill Games this summer in St. Petersburg, Russia.

-- Erin Caviezel, who graduated from Mount Vernon High School, accepted a full scholarship to Loyola Marymount of Los Angeles. Caviezel played guard for Mount Vernon. In last season's state tournament, she led in Class AA scoring with 21.5 points per game and in three-pointers with 11.