Motocross

Supercross champion Jeff Stanton made an impressive move toward a third consecutive title when he rode away from a strong field to win the Coors Light Challenge Saturday night before 56,029 at Anaheim Stadium. Stanton, a Honda factory team rider from Sherwood, Mich., fought off a challenge from two-time Supercross champion Jeff Ward of Capistrano Beach for the first eight laps and then pulled away.

A sea of children crowds around the BMX riders as they spin, hop, jump a ramp and, finally, soar over a group of teachers nervously lying below. "Squash 'em," yells Reid Lathem, a red-haired fifth-grader wearing a stud earring. But David Holden, 33, leader of a troupe of bicycle motocross stunt riders performing for 600 students at Santa Susana Elementary School, expertly clears the women. After the spectacle, Holden gets down to business. "We're drug-free riders," Holden says.

The formula for the overwhelming success of stadium motocross in Southern California over the past few years has been rather simple. For starters, riders Jeff Ward of Mission Viejo and Rick Johnson of El Cajon have developed one of the fiercest rivalries in motor sports, dominating motocross for the past three years.

Jean-Michel Bayle of France has won two world motocross championships in his brief career, but the title he wants most is that of Supercross champion of the United States. Bayle, who lives in Redondo Beach during the racing season, came close last year but finished second to his Honda teammate, two-time champion Jeff Stanton of Sherwood, Mich. Bayle won five races to four for Stanton, but the Frenchman missed two races because of injuries and that cost him the championship.

The two finest motocross riders in the country--perhaps the world--will be at Anaheim Stadium tonight for the Coors Light Challenge, the third event of the Camel Supercross series, after spending the off-season in starkly different ways. Last year's series ended July 11 in the Coliseum with Jeff Stanton, a Honda rider from Sherwood, Mich., winning his third championship by three points over Yamaha-mounted Damon Bradshaw of Mooresville, N.C.

Jean-Michel Bayle wanted to go out a winner and he did. The slender Honda factory motorcycle rider from France, who moved to Redondo Beach two years ago to campaign for the Camel Supercross championship, climaxed his winning season Saturday night by running away with the Coors Light Challenge, the year's final race. The victory, before 37,472 in the Coliseum, was Bayle's eighth in the 18-race series, more than any rider has won in one season.

A year-long investigation into one of Anaheim's most entrenched street gangs has resulted in 33 arrests and the seizure of dozens of guns, a crackdown that comes on the heels of weeks of street protests triggered by the fatal police shootings of two men. The investigation, dubbed Operation Halo, involved more than 250 law enforcement officers who fanned out across Orange County and parts of L.A. County as the sun was coming up Friday. The probe was aimed at Eastside Anaheim, a gang that police said has been highly active in crime in recent years.

Jeremy Lusk, star of a daredevil sport known as freestyle motocross and a popular action sports hero, died early Tuesday from head injuries suffered during a crash Saturday at a competition in San Jose, Costa Rica. He was 24. Lusk, a Temecula resident, had been in a medically induced coma, with swelling of the brain, at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose. A spokesman at the hospital said he suffered severe brain damage and a possible spinal cord injury.

Reporting from Pala, Calif. -- When Margarita Owlinguish Britten died in 1925, she was a revered elder of the Pala Indian tribe, a survivor of the forced relocation in 1903 of the Cupeño Indians to an area beside the San Luis Rey River in northern San Diego County. But now, renewed doubts about Britten's lineage are at the root of a divisive "blood quantum" dispute roiling the 1,000-member Pala Band of Mission Indians, formed by the fusion of the Cupeño and Luiseño bands. At issue is whether Britten was a full-blooded Indian.

Meet Colt Prattes: He's the young man who costars with Pink in the video the pop star released Tuesday, for her new single "Try. " Sensual, stunning and a bit sad, "Try" has a fiercely choreographed interpretation of the Apache dance, one that's earned praise for Pink and the able-bodied Prattes. The Ministry called Colt at home in Las Vegas and uncovered the following essentials: He's been a dancer since high school: And he did it for the ladies. "I kind of got into it to meet girls," Prattes admitted, but he followed the craft to the University of Cincinnati, where he received a bachelor of fine arts.