Olympics

JONES EMPHATIC: With each question Marion Jones gets about steroids, her denials become more emphatic. She took everything a step further Sunday, saying she would go to court if the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency bars her from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test.

USADA has the power to bring a drug case against an athlete in lieu of a positive test when the agency has "other reason to believe that a potential doping violation has occurred, such as admitted doping," according to its rules.

Jones, speaking at the U.S. Olympic Team Media Summit, was one of several athletes who testified before a grand jury in the BALCO investigation.

"If I make the Olympic team, which I plan to do in Sacramento, and I'm held from the Olympic Games because of something that somebody thought, you can pretty much bet there will be a lawsuit," said Jones, who won five track and field medals at the 2000 Olympics.

"I'm not going to sit down and let someone or a group of people or an organization take away my livelihood because of a hunch, because of a thought, because of somebody who's trying to show their power."

At the request of her lawyers and management team, Jones refuses to comment on how she became involved with BALCO and its founder, Victor Conte.

SHORTLIST COMING: When the IOC meets this week to come up with a shortlist of finalists to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, the question is: How short?

With nine cities in the running, the International Olympic Committee executive board is expected to eliminate at least three candidates and possibly as many as five Tuesday.

The IOC doesn't have a target number of finalists, but several members said in interviews that five is most likely. Four cities are virtually assured of making the cut: Paris, London, New York and Madrid, Spain. One definitely won't stay in it: Havana.

That leaves four cities on the bubble: Moscow; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Istanbul, Turkey; and Leipzig, Germany. At least two of those could be dropped.

The 2012 host will be selected in July 2005 in Singapore.

Auto racing

MORE STEWART CRITICISM: It's becoming a common post-race scene in NASCAR's top series: Dale Earnhardt Jr. celebrating a victory and at least one driver lamenting how Tony Stewart cost him a chance at winning.

This time, Stewart incurred the ire of four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, nudging him wide with 41 laps to go in Saturday night's Chevy American Revolution 400 as a long sprint to the finish unfolded.

And while Earnhardt took the suspense out of the finish with a lights-out run to his third Nextel Cup victory of the season, Gordon was left fuming.

"We're seeing it every weekend and you think a guy getting abused by the media and the drivers would start thinking a little bit more," Gordon said after saving his car and hanging on to finish sixth.

"He had a much faster car, fresher tires, got inside of me and the position was his and he just drove straight into me and put me in the wall and about put himself in the wall," Gordon said. "It cost us a top five."

Stewart said his car slipped in some oil dry that had been put down after an earlier crash and that he wasn't trying to ease Gordon aside.

"I had a top-three night until I ran into the No. 24," he said.

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Tennis

CAPRIATI FALLS: Amelie Mauresmo came back from a set down, saved a match point, and beat Jennifer Capriati in a third-set tiebreaker Sunday to win the Italian Open for her second straight title. The second-seeded Mauresmo won 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (6) to follow up her German Open victory last week and establish herself as a favorite for the French Open, which starts a week from Monday.

The only other women to win the German Open and Italian Open consecutively — Steffi Graf in 1987, and Monica Seles in 1990 — went on to take the title at Roland Garros.

Capriati held match point on Mauresmo's serve while leading 5-4 in the third set, but the American hit a forehand long. Mauresmo, the runner-up at Rome's clay-court tournament three of the past four years, closed out the win on her second match point, when Capriati's backhand sailed long.

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