Sports briefs 9/10/05

Cycling

• Cycling's governing body said Friday it had received no evidence of doping by Lance Armstrong and criticized world doping authorities and a French sports newspaper for making allegations against the seven-time Tour de France champion.

UCI said it was still gathering information and had asked the World Anti-Doping Agency and the French laboratory for more background. It also wanted to know who commissioned the research and who agreed to make it public.

Football

* Former Miami Dolphins linebacker Steve Towle was charged with felony first-degree assault in what prosecutors said was a road rage incident that left a man hospitalized with bleeding from the brain.

Towle, 51, was arrested after the incident Wednesday night in the Kansas City suburb of Independence and charged Thursday in Jackson County Circuit Court. A police statement said the 6-foot-3, 300-pound Towle admitted either punching or pushing the other man, Rudolph Babbitt, and said Babbitt hit his head on the ground when he fell.

Towle, a former star at the University of Kansas who played for the Dolphins from 1975-80 and still holds the team's single-season tackles record, now lives in the suburb of Lee's Summit.

Swimming

* Eight Olympic gold medals won by swimmer Johnny Weissmuller have been returned to the International Swimming Hall of Fame Museum, along with other memorabilia allegedly taken by a maintenance worker.

Mark Spitz, a seven-time swimming Olympic gold medalist and museum board member, took part in a ceremony Thursday to mark the return of about 150 medals, trophies and cups -- including those won in 1924 by Weissmuller, who later gained even greater fame as the star of several "Tarzan" movies.

Paul Nichols Christow is charged with two counts of dealing in stolen property and two counts of grand theft over $100,000. Prosecutors said the 49-year-old used his unfettered access over several days to swipe the medals, valued at nearly $500,000, from the museum's collection.