BRIEFLY : LEMIEUX TO RETIRE.

Mario Lemieux, a five-time NHL scoring champion whose career with the Pittsburgh Penguins has been hampered by a bad back and a bout with cancer, says he definitely will retire after the playoffs.

The 31-year-old center could go out in style by winning the Art Ross Trophy for the sixth time. He leads the league with 117 points on 49 goals and 68 assists.

After hinting strongly for months that this would be his final season, Lemieux formally announced his retirement for the first time Saturday night.

``I just wanted to take a couple of seconds to say that this will be my last year officially,'' Lemieux said at the annual Dapper Dan banquet at a downtown Pittsburgh hotel.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Roosevelt Wagner, the former Michigan State football player who prompted an NCAA investigation at the university, was arrested in Ohio on suspicion of drug trafficking, two newspapers reported Sunday.

HOCKEY: Nancy Drolet stretched behind United States goalie Erin Whitten to tip in a fluttering puck at 12:59 of overtime and give Canada its fourth straight gold medal in the Women's World Ice Hockey Championship 4-3 at Kitchener, Ontario.

COLLEGE BASEBALL:Led by Dan McKinley's two runs scored and three RBI, Arizona State defeated UCLA 15-14 in a Pacific-10 game at Tempe, Ariz.

Jon Schaeffer hit a homer to add three runs to a seven-run third inning as visiting Stanford beat USC 10-3 in a Pac-10 game.

STEEPLECHASE: The Grand National, the world's most famous steeplechase, was reset for today, two days after it was abandoned because of bomb warnings that forced 70,000 fans to evacuate the Aintree race course in Liverpool, England.

OLYMPICS: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the country's athletes will compete under their own flag during the 1998 Winter Olympics despite a union treaty he signed with Russia last week. Lukashenko met with the president of the International Olympic Committee, who pledged financial support to help Belarusian athletes participate in the Olympics at Nagano, Japan.

SOCCER: Carlos Valderrama scored one goal and assisted on another as the Tampa Bay Mutiny beat the New England Revolution 4-0 in a Major League Soccer game in Tampa, Fla.