French Alps

EVIAN, France - Michelle Wie knows it's tough keeping up with the best men in the game. In the French Alps yesterday, she learned that beating golf's top female money winner this season, Mexico's Lorena Ochoa, won't be much easier. Ochoa, Mi Hyun Kim and Shani Waugh shot 6-under-par 66s at Evian Golf Club to lead after the first round of the Evian Masters, with temperatures reaching 91 degrees. A year ago, Ochoa was the runner-up with Wie here when Paula Creamer won. Creamer opened this time with a 70. Karrie Webb was a shot behind after a 67, with Maria Hjorth, Laura Davies and Se Ri Pak in at 68. Wie had a 69, and was tied with Annika Sorenstam and four others.

John P. Bodnar, 88, of Collegeville, a retired Marine sergeant major whose ordeals during World War II earned him a Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor, died of heart failure Monday, Feb. 14, at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Coatesville. After graduating from Coatesville High School, Mr. Bodnar spent the summer as a swimming and athletics instructor at a camp before enlisting in the Marines in September 1940. In the early days of the war, he was a parachute instructor at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

During a four-hour rescue from a mountain in the French Alps, Philadelphian Matthew Gimbl - who had fallen head-first into a crevasse while skiing Sunday - remained conscious, telling his rescuers that he wanted to live. But just moments before he was pulled to safety, the 21-year-old died. "His general state worsened," said Gorge Cardoso, from the ski resort's emergency station. "About 10 minutes before [he was freed] . . . his heart stopped. They performed heart massage, mouth-to-mouth.

Floyd Landis' bicycle journey, from the rolling hills of Lancaster County to the French Alps to the Champs-Elysees in Paris, is one of the most inspirational stories of the year in sports. Landis, 30, won the Tour de France on Sunday, overcoming a chronic hip ailment that will require joint-replacement surgery next month. Injured in a crash three years ago, Landis suffers from the same debilitating condition - loss of blood supply to the hip bone - that affects at least 10,000 Americans annually.

Filled with breathtaking shots of crazed nutballs on skis plummeting down pitched peaks at high speed, Steep is a visually exhilarating sports documentary that is also more than a little exasperating. These guys (all but one of the "extreme skiers" featured in Mark Obenhaus' film are men) talk about what they're doing - getting to the trickiest, remotest patches of the Alps, the Rockies or wherever and then zooming groundward - as though there is nothing more meaningful, more profound, more enlightening, for a human being to do. As hugely skilled and fearless as these skiers are, they're huge with self-importance and hyperbole, too. But those are the interviews.

This seaside resort town harbors the largest sand dunes in the world. For $60, I was able to get a private two-hour tour with Jeff, owner of the local four-wheeling company. First, I had to sign a waiver with a clause that specified I could not "ramp" the vehicle. I made a mental note to ask Jeff about this later. As a former snowmobile guide in the French Alps, I quickly got the impression I knew what I was doing. I followed Jeff onto the dunes, elegantly crafted by the wind in enormous proportions.

In case you've never heard of this place, it's press central for the biggest winter party of 1992 - the Winter Olympics. It is also the "official" site of the Games. But if you want to see the alpine skiing events, don't - repeat, don't - come to this town in the Savoie region of the French Alps. And, most assuredly, don't book a hotel room here. Head, instead, for Bourg-St. Maurice, a charming town within easy commuting distance of three major venues for downhill events: Val-d'Isere, Les Arcs and Tignes.

Five skiers were killed in a mountain resort yesterday as dozens of them were pitched from a chairlift onto rocks and snow below, officials reported. The officials said 41 people were seriously hurt and 76 were treated for lesser injuries and shock in the accident at Luz-Ardiden in the Pyrenees Mountains. Victims reportedly fell from heights of up to 130 feet. Rescue workers said the number of casualties was large, partly because there had been no new snow for a week and many people fell onto bare rock.

WHEN IT COMES to scientific disciplines, studying avalanches would be hard to categorize.' But that was Nicholas DiGiacomo's favorite preoccupation. And he was in the perfect place to observe the scary phenomenon - the mountains of Colorado. Nick, whose day jobs involved nuclear physics, antimatter, particle colliders and his service as a science adviser to President Ronald Reagan, died March 9 of complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease). He was 58 and lived in Telluride, Colo.

WHEN IT COMES to scientific disciplines, studying avalanches would be hard to categorize.' But that was Nicholas DiGiacomo's favorite preoccupation. And he was in the perfect place to observe the scary phenomenon - the mountains of Colorado. Nick, whose day jobs involved nuclear physics, antimatter, particle colliders and his service as a science adviser to President Ronald Reagan, died March 9 of complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease). He was 58 and lived in Telluride, Colo.

John P. Bodnar, 88, of Collegeville, a retired Marine sergeant major whose ordeals during World War II earned him a Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor, died of heart failure Monday, Feb. 14, at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Coatesville. After graduating from Coatesville High School, Mr. Bodnar spent the summer as a swimming and athletics instructor at a camp before enlisting in the Marines in September 1940. In the early days of the war, he was a parachute instructor at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Filled with breathtaking shots of crazed nutballs on skis plummeting down pitched peaks at high speed, Steep is a visually exhilarating sports documentary that is also more than a little exasperating. These guys (all but one of the "extreme skiers" featured in Mark Obenhaus' film are men) talk about what they're doing - getting to the trickiest, remotest patches of the Alps, the Rockies or wherever and then zooming groundward - as though there is nothing more meaningful, more profound, more enlightening, for a human being to do. As hugely skilled and fearless as these skiers are, they're huge with self-importance and hyperbole, too. But those are the interviews.

EVIAN, France - Michelle Wie knows it's tough keeping up with the best men in the game. In the French Alps yesterday, she learned that beating golf's top female money winner this season, Mexico's Lorena Ochoa, won't be much easier. Ochoa, Mi Hyun Kim and Shani Waugh shot 6-under-par 66s at Evian Golf Club to lead after the first round of the Evian Masters, with temperatures reaching 91 degrees. A year ago, Ochoa was the runner-up with Wie here when Paula Creamer won. Creamer opened this time with a 70. Karrie Webb was a shot behind after a 67, with Maria Hjorth, Laura Davies and Se Ri Pak in at 68. Wie had a 69, and was tied with Annika Sorenstam and four others.

Floyd Landis' bicycle journey, from the rolling hills of Lancaster County to the French Alps to the Champs-Elysees in Paris, is one of the most inspirational stories of the year in sports. Landis, 30, won the Tour de France on Sunday, overcoming a chronic hip ailment that will require joint-replacement surgery next month. Injured in a crash three years ago, Landis suffers from the same debilitating condition - loss of blood supply to the hip bone - that affects at least 10,000 Americans annually.

Lindsay Davenport and James Blake led the United States to its second straight Hopman Cup title yesterday with a 2-1 victory over Slovakia's Daniela Hantuchova and Karol Kucera in Perth, Australia. The two combined for a 6-2, 6-3 win in the decisive mixed-doubles match. That gave the United States its third championship in 16 Hopman Cups, the most by any nation. Davenport opened singles play with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Hantuchova. Kucera then came from 3-0 down in the third set to beat Blake, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5)

During a four-hour rescue from a mountain in the French Alps, Philadelphian Matthew Gimbl - who had fallen head-first into a crevasse while skiing Sunday - remained conscious, telling his rescuers that he wanted to live. But just moments before he was pulled to safety, the 21-year-old died. "His general state worsened," said Gorge Cardoso, from the ski resort's emergency station. "About 10 minutes before [he was freed] . . . his heart stopped. They performed heart massage, mouth-to-mouth.

This seaside resort town harbors the largest sand dunes in the world. For $60, I was able to get a private two-hour tour with Jeff, owner of the local four-wheeling company. First, I had to sign a waiver with a clause that specified I could not "ramp" the vehicle. I made a mental note to ask Jeff about this later. As a former snowmobile guide in the French Alps, I quickly got the impression I knew what I was doing. I followed Jeff onto the dunes, elegantly crafted by the wind in enormous proportions.

We probably should have skied back to our hotel here in Meribel. Instead, we went to Courchevel for dessert. It didn't seem to matter that it was already past 2:30 p.m., or that some lifts might soon be closing, or that we'd been schussing all day over terrain roughly the size of Liechtenstein on legs gone rubbery from exhaustion, or that the sheer size of this mega-resort known by the French as Les Trois Vallees (the Three Valleys) had already exposed my flawed navigation skills.