YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: SPORTS-AND-GAMES: EQUESTRIAN SPORTS

EQUESTRIAN SPORTS: Harness Racing. Helen Johansson of Sweden made Prix d'Amerique history in January at the Hippodrome de Vincennes near Paris, where she not only became the first woman to drive in the prestigious event for trotters but actually won it, guiding Ina Scot. At odds of 28 to 1, Ina Scot ran down the French favourite Vourasie (a half sister to the only four-time winner of the race, Orausie) in the final metres to beat her in a torrid finish. Ina Scot had become a star in Sweden, where she won 31 consecutive races from April 1992 through November 1993. At Stockholm's Solvalla track in May, defending Swedish champion Copiad won the $462,962 Elitlopp. Driven by Erik Berglof for owner Stall Succe, the six-year-old trotter won his elimination heat in 1 min 54.7 sec and the final in 1 min 54.4 sec, earning $290,000 to push his career bankroll past $1.7 million. David's Pass, driven by John Campbell, won the $1 million North American Cup at Toronto's Woodbine Raceway in June and then added the $1 million Meadowlands Pace at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 1 min 50.8 sec. In August, also at the Meadowlands, David's Pass won the Adios Pace in 1 min 51.8 sec to boost his seasonal earnings to $1.4 million. Tagliabue, whose sire Super Bowl won the 1972 Hambletonian, scored an upset victory in the $1 million 1995 Hambletonian at the Meadowlands in August. The heavy favourite in the premier race for three-year-old trotters, world record holder CR Kay Suzie, broke stride when challenging in the first of the two $100,000 elimination heats and failed to qualify. Tagliabue won that heat and the final, both in 1 min 54.8 sec. CR Kay Suzie's 1995 wins included the $585,000 World Trotting Derby at Du Quoin, Ill., in September, beating Tagliabue in straight heats in 1 min 53.4 sec and 1 min 52.8 sec. The same month, the Royal Troubador filly overpowered seven of the best older mares in the $300,000 Breeders Crown at Delaware, Ohio. Nick's Fantasy, aided by a heady drive on the part of John Campbell, scored an upset win over favourite Village Connection in the final of the $512,830 50th running of the Little Brown Jug for three-year-old pacers at Delaware, Ohio, in September. Nick's Fantasy comfortably won his heat in 1 min 54.6 sec before easily taking the final in 1 min 51.4 sec--a world record for three-year-old geldings on a half-mile oval (1 mile=1.61 km). A Stud Named Sue, a two-year-old pacing colt, driven by little-known reinsman George Brennan, convincingly won the $585,500 Woodrow Wilson Pace at the Meadowlands in August in 1 min 52.8 sec. Ball And Chain, a five-year-old son of Alabatross, broke the 1-min 50-sec barrier for the first time in Canadian harness racing history, winning his elimination heat in the Canadian Pacing Derby on the 7/8-mi (7 furlongs) Woodbine Raceway in August in 1 min 49.8 sec. In the $278,250 final, however, Pacific Rocket beat Ball And Chain by a nose in 1 min 50.2 sec. His Majesty, one of the two Swedish horses that were the only European representatives in a nine-horse field for the $300,000 International Trot at Yonkers (N.Y.) Raceway in August, won easily. The $NZ 400,000 1995 Inter-Dominion Pacing Championship Grand Final at Addington, N.Z., in March was won handsomely by five-year-old Golden Reign. The $NZ 300,000 New Zealand Cup, run at Addington on November 7, was won by Il Vicolo. Only the fifth four-year-old to win the grueling test in 92 runnings, Il Vicolo paced the 3,200 m (3,500 yd) in a record-equaling 4 min 0.4 sec. (RONALD W. BISMAN) EQUESTRIAN SPORTS: Polo. The Argentine Open, the climax of the Argentine high-handicap season, from October to December 1995, was won again by Indios Chapaleuf. Consisting of the four Heguy brothers--Bautista, Gonzalo, Horacio, Jr., and Marcos--the new champions defeated La Mariana (Mike Azzaro, Sebastian and Juan Ignacio Merlos, and Milo Fernndez Araujo) 14-10 in the final. Ellerstina, the 1994 Open champion, had earlier scored triumphs in the Los Indios Tortugas and Hurlingham Open, defeating La Martina and Indios Chapaleuf, respectively, in the finals. But Kerry Packer's team lost its chance to repeat as Open champion when it was beaten by Indios Chapaleuf in the semifinals. In July the International Polo Federation held the fourth world championship for teams with handicaps between 10 and 14 goals. The preliminary round was played in Dsseldorf, Germany, with six teams taking part: Switzerland (host nation), Argentina (defending champion), and qualifying zone winners England, Mexico, Brazil, and India. The teams then moved to Saint Moritz, Switz., for the final round. In the match for the championship, Brazil defeated favoured Argentina 11-10. Mexico beat England 11-10 in overtime in the consolation final. In England, Labegorce won the Queen's Cup, played in Windsor, beating Alcatel in the final. Meanwhile, Packer's Ellerston White outclassed Urs Schwarzenbach's Black Bears to obtain the Gold Cup. Both champions then clashed in the Silver Jubilee Cup, which Labegorce won 12-11 after two extra chukkers. Argentina won the Coronation Cup 14-8 over England. The U.S. Open in September featured as its two finalists Outback and White Birch. The winner was Outback, whose leader, Memo Gracida, had also been a member of the 1994 champion, Aspen. At Palm Beach, Fla., in January, the outstanding teams were Ellerston White, White Birch, and Calumet, which won the Challenge and World Cup, Gold Cup, and Sterling Cup, respectively. (JORGE ADRIN ANDRADES) EQUESTRIAN SPORTS: Show Jumping and Dressage. Peter Charles and Lucy Thompson, two British riders now representing Ireland, won individual gold medals at, respectively, the European show jumping championships at St. Gallen, Switz., and the Open European Three-Day Event championships at Pratoni del Vivaro, Italy. Charles, who rode La Ina, switched countries to gain more international opportunities; Thompson, who won on Welton Romance, represented Ireland because her husband was Irish. Switzerland successfully defended the show jumping team championship it had won in 1993, and Britain gained a narrow victory over New Zealand in the three-day event. (ROBERT W. CARTER) EQUESTRIAN SPORTS: Steeplechasing. Trainer Kim Bailey and jockey Norman Williamson were responsible for both of the big jumping winners at Cheltenham-Master Oats in the Gold Cup and Alderbrook in the Champion Hurdle. Royal Athlete, at 40-1, gave Jenny Pitman her second training success in the Grand National. Algan, trained in France by Francis Doumen, won the King George VI Chase in England, while his stablemates, Ubu III and Val d'Alene, filled the first two places in the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris. British racing lost one of its heroes when Red Rum died at the age of 30 on October 18. He won the Grand National in 1973, 1974, and 1977 and finished second in the two intervening years. (ROBERT W. CARTER) EQUESTRIAN SPORTS: Thoroughbred Racing Dubayy joined the world's leading racing nations in 1995 when it was announced that the first $4 million Dubayy World Cup, the world's richest race, would be run at the Nad ash-Sheba racetrack on March 27, 1996. The sport was introduced to the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubayy is one of seven members, in 1986, and the first race in Dubayy itself was not run until November 1991. Dubayy was also becoming an important winter training centre. The first experiment was with Dayflower, which finished fifth in the 1993 One Thousand Guineas a few days after her return to Britain. In 1995 Red Bishop, which had left Dubayy in December 1994 to win in Hong Kong, added another valuable prize there in April and later that month won the San Juan Capistrano at Santa Anita, Calif. When the Godolphin Racing team, organized in 1994 by Sheikh Muhammad al-Maktoum for the purpose of wintering horses in Dubayy, returned to Europe, Moonshell, Lammtarra, and Halling won Group One races in England, while Vettori scored at the top level in France and Flagbird in Italy. Lammtarra became only the second horse--his predecessor was Mill Reef in 1971--to have won the English Derby, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in the same season. Sheikh Muhammad rejected a Japanese offer for Lammtarra. However, though Lammtarra was retired to stud at Newmarket, the sheikh did sell his 1994 Arc de Triomphe winner, Carnegie, to Japan. Lammtarra, which raced in the name of the sheikh's nephew, Sa'id ibn Maktoum al-Maktoum, ran only four times. None of his victories was easy. He beat Tamure by one length in the Derby, Pentire by a neck in the King George, and Freedom Cry by three-quarters of a length in the Arc de Triomphe. In between the last two, Pentire, which won six of his seven races in 1995, beat Freedom Cry by half a length in the Guinness Champion Stakes at Leopardstown, Ireland, to confirm that Lammtarra was only slightly superior to his rivals. Lammtarra, however, was not named Cartier Horse of the Year, that honour going to Ridgewood Pearl, which gained Group One success in Britain, France, and Ireland and then won the Breeders' Cup Mile. Pennekamp, the champion two-year-old of 1994 in France, beat his British equivalent, Celtic Swing, by a head in the Two Thousand Guineas. But he suffered a fracture in his right foreleg when finishing 11th behind Lammtarra in the Derby and did not race again. Celtic Swing went on to win the Prix du Jockey-Club (French Derby) but injured himself in the Irish Derby and also vanished from the scene. Andre Fabre was French champion trainer for the ninth consecutive year, and John Dunlop filled that position in Britain for the first time in a 30-year career. Earlier in the season Dunlop had trained his 2,000th winner in Britain. Henry Cecil was the only other active British trainer to have passed that mark. Thierry Jarnet and Lanfranco Dettori retained their jockeys championships in France and Britain, respectively, as did Peter Schiergen in Germany. Schiergen had ridden 256 winners by November 19 and was on course to set a new European record for winners in a season. British racing lost Lester Piggott, 11 times champion jockey between 1960 and 1982, who announced his retirement at the age of 59. Doriemus, a five-year-old bred in New Zealand, became the ninth horse in the 20th century to have won both the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup in the same year. He gave trainer Lee Freedman his third Melbourne Cup victory in seven years when he beat the Victoria Derby winner, Nothin' Leica Dane, by four lengths. Lando, only 12th in the Breeders' Cup Turf, returned to top form in the Japan Cup in Tokyo on November 26. The German five-year-old ended his career with a 1 1/2-length victory over Hishi Amazon in the richest race of 1995. (ROBERT W. CARTER) FENCING Dominating international fencing during the 1994-95 season was the global limit of 220 fencing places for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga. Operating under this constraint, the Fdration Internationale d'Escrime (FIE--the international governing body) was forced to devise a convoluted qualification process that gave a fair representation for each of fencing's world zones while at the same time maintaining high athletic standards. Most of the qualifications for the Olympics took place at the world championships in The Hague in July 1995 during the team competitions. Emerging from the championships was a strong team from China that seemed certain to challenge past European domination. Only Italy and Russia qualified directly in all disciplines. At the start of the season, international rule changes, designed to make the sport more attractive to spectators and television viewers, were introduced. In the opinion of many, the most effective of these was the return to traditional foot and leg movements at sabre, which thus outlawed running and flching. This forced fencers to pay greater attention to defense and substantially reduced the number of simultaneous hits, which had plagued the weapon in the past. Sabre was still the fastest of the three weapons (the other two being foil and pe) but with the new rule should be easier for the nonexpert to follow. Other changes important to athletes included an increase in the size of sponsorship names allowed on clothing and the introduction of coloured clothing, although the latter was not generally adopted. Additionally, the strength of protective clothing was increased, and development of the transparent mask continued. The FIE hoped that this mask would replace the traditional metal gauze-fronted head protection in order to render fencers identifiable. (GRAHAM MORRISON) FIELD HOCKEY Germany won the two main prizes for men's field hockey in 1995, retaining the European Nations Cup in Dublin in August and regaining the Champions Trophy in Berlin in the autumn. The Dublin final was decided on penalty strokes after a 2-2 draw against The Netherlands. England finished third and Belgium fourth. In Berlin the Champions Trophy final was also settled on penalty strokes after the match against Australia was tied at 2-2. Pakistan, The Netherlands, India, and England filled the remaining places in that order. Earlier in the year South Korea won the Indira Gandhi Gold Cup in New Delhi in February after defeating India 3-1 in the final. In third place was Australia, ahead of Kazakhstan, England, Malaysia, South Africa, and Poland. Argentina served as host for the Pan American Games at Mar del Plata in March and finished first, followed by Canada, the U.S., Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, and Paraguay. Spain won a four-nation tournament at Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in June, with Ireland in second place, the U.S. third, and Scotland fourth. At a similar event in Atlanta, Ga., in September, Germany finished first, Australia second, India (A) third, and the U.S. fourth. Germany was later disqualified on a technical fault, and all other finishers moved up one place. In Sardinia, Italy, Australia won a tournament for six nations, finishing ahead of South Korea, Canada, India (B), Italy, and France. South Africa took the title at the African Games at Harare, Zimbabwe, where Egypt was second. In women's competition, Australia won the Champions Trophy at Mar del Plata in September. South Korea was second, followed by the U.S., Germany, Spain, and Argentina. South Africa took first in the African Games tournament at Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, ahead of Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, and Ghana. Australia won a tournament at Atlanta in August. Spain was second, the U.S. third, and South Africa fourth. The Netherlands regained the European Nations Cup at Amstelveen, Neth., in June with a victory over Spain on penalties after a 2-2 draw in the final. Germany finished third, followed by England, Russia, Scotland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and Sweden. (SYDNEY E. FRISKIN) FOOTBALL The qualifying matches for the 1996 European championships, the finals of which were to be held in England with 16 teams featured for the first time, occupied the attention of a record number of 48 countries that entered the competition. Spain became the first to qualify and, with Russia, was the most impressive of the finalists. France achieved a record score by beating Azerbaijan 10-0 with eight different players scoring goals. Yugoslavia was the only European country that did not participate in the championship, though Croatia qualified, along with England (as hosts), Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Turkey, Italy, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Scotland, and Switzerland in its centenary year. The Netherlands won the 16th and final spot after defeating the Republic of Ireland in a play-off. Bulgaria was led by European soccer's Player of the Year Hristo Stoichkov (see BIOGRAPHIES). The Union des Associations Europenes de Football (UEFA) switched its Swiss headquarters to Nyon, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and made moves to challenge the previously unquestioned authority of the Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world governing body. UEFA was now responsible for 10 different competitions at the club and international levels. A record 170 clubs entered its three major tournaments. In England attendance at matches increased for the ninth successive season, but a number of scandals flawed the image of the game: three players were charged with fixing the results of matches; George Graham, the Arsenal manager of nine years, was dismissed and banned for a year after accepting a gift of money from a player trade; serious outbreaks of hooliganism took place; and some players were found to be taking drugs. England's match against Ireland at Dublin on February 15 was abandoned after 27 minutes because of rioting by some England supporters. Eric Cantona, who played for France and Manchester United, was found guilty of assaulting a spectator. He received a two-week jail sentence that on appeal was reduced to community service. After a spectator was stabbed to death in Genoa, Italy, the match between the home team and AC Milan was abandoned at halftime. On the following Sunday Italian officials canceled all national sports events as a mark of respect as well as protest against the escalation of violence. Average league attendances in Italy declined slightly to 29,215 per match but rose significantly to 29,271 for a record in Germany. The premier league in England reported final average figures of 24,271. In England the Blackburn Rovers achieved their first championship since 1914, assisted by the 60 million spent on players and ground improvements given by millionaire supporter Jack Walker. In Scotland the Rangers won their 45th championship, the seventh in succession. In Spain, La Corua's cup final against Valencia was interrupted by rain in the 79th minute with the score at 1-1. The remaining 11 minutes were played three days later, La Corua scoring the winning goal in the first minute. Dynamo Kiev, the champion of Ukraine, was eliminated from the European Champions' Cup competition for bribing a referee. Jean-Marc Bosman, a former player with FC Lige in Belgium, appeared before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg claiming that the transfer (trade) and quota system on foreign players imposed by UEFA infringed community law. He was able to prove that transfer fees at the end of a player's contract were illegal; thus, the financial implications for the professional game were likely to be widespread. Despite this expected outcome, the English premier league clubs spent a record of more than 100 million in transfer fees. Many of the transfers involved players from other nations, and their total increased to 66 at the start of the 1995-96 season. The English record was broken when Stan Collymore, a striker, moved from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool for 8.5 million. AC Milan invested 12.9 million in Juventus forward Roberto Baggio and signed another striker, George Weah from Paris St. Germain, for 10 million. A record fee for a teenager brought 19-year-old midfield player Clarence Seedorf to the Italian club Sampdoria from Ajax Amsterdam in a 4.5 million transaction. Ajax Amsterdam, undefeated in 34 domestic league games, completed its third victory of the season over the defending champion, AC Milan, in the European Champions' Cup final in Vienna on May 24. Ajax's previous two wins, both by a 2-0 margin, were achieved in the Champions League section of the competition. The third success came in a quiet, undistinguished match in which AC Milan was unable to re-create the enterprise and verve displayed a year earlier. Yet Milan might have scored first close to halftime. A volley from Marco Simone almost surprised Ajax goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar. The chief threat from Milan came from the penetration of Demetrio Albertini into the heart of the Ajax defense. But the Dutch team coach, Louis Van Gaal, made an inspired substitution in the 65th minute, bringing on Patrick Kluivert for Jari Litmanen, a Finnish international. Twenty minutes later, with time running toward a possible extra period of play, Edgar Davids drifted in from the left flank of the Ajax attack and found Frank Rijkaard, who angled the ball into the centre and raced for a return pass, distracting the Milan defense enough for Kluivert to stab a shot past goalkeeper Sebastiano Rossi. The victory brought Ajax its first European Cup win since the early 1970s. There had been fewer more dramatic goals than the one that enabled Real Zaragoza of Spain to defeat the European Cup-Winners' Cup defending champion, Arsenal of England, 2-1 in the final at Paris on May 10. The seconds of extra time had almost ticked away when Nayim (Mohamed Ali Amar) tried a high lob from 40 yd out near the right touchline. The attempt caught the poorly positioned Arsenal goalkeeper, David Seaman, yards out of his goal, and despite a desperate leap, he was unable to prevent the ball from entering the net under the bar. Although Arsenal had more territorial advantage, Zaragoza was dangerous on the counterattack. It scored first in the 68th minute when Juan Esnaider spectacularly controlled the ball, turned, and shot left-footed in one concise movement. It took eight minutes for Arsenal to respond. Ray Parlour on the right found Paul Merson, who squared the ball for John Hartson to slide in for the tying goal from six yards out. For the seventh successive season, at least one Italian team played in the final of the UEFA Cup. This time Parma defeated fellow Italian club Juventus 2-1 on aggregate scores, depriving its victim of a possible third honour; Juventus had already won the Italian League and Italian Cup. At Parma on May 3, a goal by Dino Baggio after five minutes settled the first game. From a Gianfranco Zola pass, he lobbed the ball in from the edge of the penalty area. Two weeks later, in the second leg, played in Milan, Gianluca Vialli tied the aggregate score with a volleyed goal after 33 minutes, but 20 minutes later Baggio, a former Juventus player, again rescued Parma. This time he headed in a cross from substitute Roberto Mussi. (JACK ROLLIN)