France Leads Davis Cup

With its resilient doubles team buoyed by a crowd pounding noise sticks, France closed in on a second consecutive Davis Cup title.

Nicolas Escude and Fabrice Santoro gave the French a 2-1 lead against Russia in the best-of-five final Saturday at Paris, defeating Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin, 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, in a match that lasted more than 3 1/2 hours.

The team winning the doubles match has won the last 24 Cup finals.

France has won nine Cup titles but hasn’t won consecutive titles since winning from 1927-32. Russia, playing in its third final, has never won the Cup.

“We gave 150% of what we were able to give today,” Santoro said. “It was tough because they were hitting very hard and very fast.”

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Golf

Jarrod Moseley of Australia held a two-stroke lead in the Australian PGA at Coolum, but a storm prevented nearly half the starters from completing the third round.

Moseley was 16 under par after 10 holes, followed by Australian Aaron Baddeley. Moseley began the round a stroke ahead of Baddeley.

Only 38 of 62 starters completed the third round when the storm and lightning hit the course. The remaining 24 players will finish the round today.

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Boxing

David Tua (42-3) knocked out Russell Chasteen (19-6) in the second round of a scheduled 10-round heavyweight fight at Atlantic City, N.J.

It was Tua’s first fight since Aug. 17, when he stopped former champion Michael Moorer in 30 seconds.

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Winter Sports

Olympic champion Tristan Gale of the United States won the women’s race in a World Cup skeleton competition at Park City, Utah, beating Canada’s Lindsay Alcock by 0.05 seconds. Canada’s Jeff Pain won the men’s race.

World Cup champion Stephan Eberharter won the season’s first downhill, leading a 1-2 finish for Austria at Lake Louise, Canada.

Hannes Trinkl finished second and Norway’s Kjetil Andre Aamodt was third. American Bode Miller finished seventh.

Sweden’s Anja Paerson overtook Croatia’s Janica Kostelic to win a women’s World Cup slalom at Aspen, Colo.

Paerson, 0.17 seconds behind Kostelic after the first heat, made up the difference with the third-fastest second run of 51.20 seconds to finish .41 of a second ahead of Kostelic.

Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno of the U.S. was disqualified in the 500-meter quarterfinals of a speedskating short-course World Cup meet at St. Petersburg, Russia.

Ohno won two preliminary heats before being penalized for blocking an opponent. China’s Li Jia Jun won the event.

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Miscellany

World champion Marian Dragulescu of Romania won the gold medal in the men’s floor exercise in the season finale of the gymnastics World Cup at Stuttgart, Germany.

Romania’s Oana Petrovski won the uneven bars; world champion Courtney Kupets of the U.S. did not enter the event. Verona van de Leur of the Netherlands won the floor exercise.

For the U.S., Sean Townsend shared a bronze medal in the rings and Allana Slater won a bronze medal in women’s floor.

Damien Covington, a former Buffalo Bills’ linebacker who played at North Carolina State, was shot to death by robbers Friday during a party in Lindenwold, N.J.

Covington, 29, played for the Bills in 1995 and 1996. A knee injury ended his career in 1997.

Police in Auckland, New Zealand, are investigating the theft of a laptop computer belonging to the principal legal advisor for Italian America’s Cup challenger Prada.

A Prada spokeswoman refused to say whether the laptop contained information relevant to Prada’s case alleging that Seattle’s OneWorld Challenge used design information belonging to rival teams.