Bronze Medal

Former Penn wrestler Brandon Slay said his Olympic wrestling gold medal is even sweeter because he knew "the agony of defeat before the thrill of victory. " The International Olympic Committee yesterday disqualified Germany's Alexander Leipold, who had beaten Slay, a graduate of Penn's Wharton School, in the 1671/2-pound freestyle final, 4-0, in Sydney, Australia, for using a banned steroid. Leipold was the third gold medalist and fifth athlete from the Games to be disqualified because of the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Lance Armstrong had come here to win gold. He had broken his neck in training, gotten hit by a car, and kept working to win one medal. "I went as fast as I could go," said the man who has a pretty fair knowledge of how far he can push himself. Yesterday, over a 49-mile course, Armstrong was 34 seconds short. Good enough for a bronze medal in the Olympic cycling time trial, his first Olympic medal in his third trip to the Games. But not the reason he had kept going after winning his second Tour de France in July.

The whistle blew and Chris Albright, his Olympics over, didn't move even an inch. The U.S. players, who had fallen just short of a bronze medal in soccer, were exchanging jerseys with the victorious Chilean players. Albright, a long way from FC Bayern, the Northeast Philly club where he grew up playing this sport, still stood there, for a minute, two minutes, his hands on his hips, staring into space. The Penn Charter graduate reached down, pulled down his socks, and tossed his shin guards to the turf.

Chris Huffins had to do what he had never done before. When he crossed the finish line after 1,500 meters, a race he used to hate, he knew that he had done it. "You know when you're a kid playing basketball by yourself?" Huffins said after winning the bronze medal in the Olympic decathlon last night. "And you imagine it's the championship game, and time is running out? And you put up a shot and it goes in and you won the championship? It was a moment just like that. " Huffins went into the second day of the decathlon with the lead.

Seconds after he was born, Ricardo Juarez's father named him "Rocky. " With his performance yesterday, the world may have discovered how fitting the name is. With his father, Carlos, and family in the stands, and a world champion cheering him on at ringside, Juarez - named after Rocky Marciano - bombarded his opponent with a flurry of body and head shots before a frenzied crowd inside the Sydney Exhibition Centre. The 125-pound bout was stopped with eight seconds left in the fourth and final round because of the 15-point mercy rule, with Juarez ahead, 31-16.

There would be no Miracle on Grass. It didn't take the U.S. men's soccer players long to figure that out. "I came out for warm-ups. I was like, 'Wow, I don't have the normal spring,' " said U.S. defender Danny Califf. "My legs were heavy. " Within 25 minutes last night, the U.S. team had given up two goals to Spain. That was it. The Americans' semifinal bid was over. The 3-1 loss at the Sydney Football Stadium means that the United States, which had been the surprise team of this tournament, will play Chile for a bronze medal Friday.

Kristy Kowal's long legs shook like tuning forks. And if she had inhaled any more deeply in the tense moments before last night's women's 200-meter breaststroke final, she might have sailed up to join the G'Day blimp hovering over the Aquatic Centre. "I think I was scared for the first time in my career," said Kowal, 20. "I've had so many disappointments in my life. " The Olympic race that followed was not one of them. Having qualified with just the fourth-best time, the lanky West Lawn, Pa., native led for much of the event's second half before yielding in the last few strokes to Hungary's Agnes Kovacs.

Eddie Eagan's eight decades of solitude was less than a half-second from ending yesterday. That was the margin between third and fifth place for Chris Witty in the women's 500-meter track cycling sprint. Witty, going fourth in a field of 17 riders, set an Olympic record with a time of 35.230 seconds. Then she waited to see if the time would hold up. It didn't, but Witty was still sitting in third place with just two riders left. If she had won the bronze medal, she would have become the first American since Eagan, a boxer and bobsledder, to earn medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

Chris Albright, a D.C. United forward from Philadelphia, was named yesterday to the final pool of under-23 players vying for places on the United States team that will compete in an Olympic qualifying tournament beginning April 21 in Hershey, Pa. Albright, 21, a Penn Charter graduate, is joined on the team by a D.C. United teammate, midfielder Ben Olsen, 22, who is from Middletown, Pa., near Harrisburg. The 25-man roster, announced by U.S. coach Clive Charles, will be pared to 18 with three alternates before training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from April 10 to 17. The Hershey tournament, for national under-23 teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean, will place two teams into the field of 16 that will compete in men's soccer at the 2000 Olympics "This is a very strong squad that I have to choose from heading into camp in April," said Charles, who led the under-23s to a bronze medal at the 1999 Pan Am Games and an overall 7-4-6 record last year.

After Jason Coben finished eighth at the PIAA diving championships when he was a sophomore, he vowed that before he graduated from Marple Newtown he would win the gold medal. And when the senior delivered on that promise Thursday at Penn State's McCoy Natatorium, it was a very emotional moment for him. With tears welling in his eyes, Coben accepted his gold medal then turned and hugged Anthony Perry, the Central Bucks West senior he had beaten for first place. Coben stepped it up in the final two rounds to beat Perry, 449.45-443.