Sports in Brief: Owens' Olympic gold sold for $1.4 million

An Olympic gold medal won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Games has sold for a record $1.4 million in an online auction.

SCP Auctions said an anonymous bidder paid $1,466,574, the highest price for a piece of Olympic memorabilia. The online auction ended Sunday.

"We just hope that it's purchased by an institution where the public could have access to it, a museum or something like that," Owens' daughter, Marlene Owens Rankin, of Chicago, told the Associated Press before the sale.

Owens won gold in the 100 and 200 meters, 400 relay, and long jump at the Games attended by Adolph Hitler, who used the Olympics to showcase his ideas of Aryan supremacy.

According to the auction house based in Laguna Niguel, Calif., the medal is unidentifiable to a specific event. It said Owens gave the medal to his friend, dancer and movie star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as thanks for helping Owens find work in entertainment after he returned from Berlin.

The medal was sold by the estate of Robinson's late widow, Elaine Plaines-Robinson. SCP Auctions vice president Dan Imler said the Owens family confirmed the medal is original; the whereabouts of the other three medals are unknown. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the medal will be donated to the Jesse Owens Foundation.

BASEBALL Chad Qualls is returning to the Houston Astros, his original team. The righthanded reliever agreed to a $6 million, two-year contract with a team option for 2016.

The Boston Red Sox finalized a $9.5 million, two-year contract with righthanded reliever Edward Mujica.

WINTER SPORTS American Heather Richardson won the 1,000-meter race in World Cup speedskating in Berlin, the final World Cup event before the Sochi Olympics. American Brittany Bowe was second.

Ted Ligety turned in a flawless final run to win a fourth straight World Cup race, edging U.S. teammate Bode Miller in Beaver Creek, Colo.

After a fifth-place finish in a World Cup super-G in Lake Louise, Alberta, her third race in three days, Lindsey Vonn stated: "I'm ready for Sochi."

SOCCER Kodi Lavrusky gave UCLA its first NCAA women's title, scoring in the 97th minute to lift the Bruins past Florida State, 1-0, in overtime in Cary, N.C.

Premier League leader Arsenal will host north London rival Tottenham in the standout game of the FA Cup's third round following Sunday's draw.

GOLF Zach Johnson holed out for par from the drop area on the 18th hole at Sherwood that got him into a playoff, and he won the World Challenge at Thousand Oaks, Calif., when Tiger Woods hit a poor shot into the bunker and missed a 5-foot par putt on the first extra hole.

Jaye Marie Green completed a runaway victory in the LPGA Tour qualifying tournament in Daytona Beach, Fla., finishing with a record 29-under 331 total for a 10-stroke margin.

Thomas Bjorn rallied with a 7-under 65 to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge in Sun City, South Africa, beating third-round leader Jamie Donaldson and Sergio Garcia by 2 shots.

Miguel Angel Jimenez clinched the Hong Kong Open in a playoff, extending his record as the oldest player to win on the European Tour.

- Associated Press