It's a Safe Bet Trump Never Made This One

It’s a Safe Bet Trump Never Made This One

By EARL GUSTKEY

Dec. 11, 1996 12 AM PT

Did Donald Trump tell a little lie about his alleged wager on the Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson fight?

Nope. It’s starting to look like a great big one.

Trump told the New York Daily News last week he won $20 million by betting $1 million on Holyfield at 20-1 odds.

When the Associated Press’ Tim Dahlberg bounced this off Las Vegas bookmakers, some burst out laughing.

Michael “Roxy” Roxborough, who sets betting lines for the top Las Vegas sports books, pointed out the longest odds spread on the fight were 17-1, three months before the fight.

He called Trump’s claim “preposterous.” He also said all the casinos in Nevada lost a combined $4 million on Holyfield-Tyson action.

Roxborough pointed out that most major casinos are publicly owned, that “it would be unheard of” for a sports book to set itself up for such a liability.

Said Gene Kivi, manager of the MGM Grand sports book: “No property would even take that kind of bet.”

And Trump? No comment.

Said his secretary: “We don’t have anything [more] to say about that,” she told Dahlberg.

Trivia time: Todd Zeile, the new Dodger, isn’t the only high-performance athlete in his family. What did his wife, the former Julianne McNamara, achieve?

Fast track: Women’s soccer, writes Jody Meacham in the San Jose Mercury News, has outgrown its stadiums in only three years.

When Santa Clara was awarded the recent women’s final four tournament three years ago, associate athletic director Amy Hackett worried that the event wouldn’t fill the university’s 9,000-seat facility, Buck Shaw Stadium.

But the event sold out a year ago, with no advertising and little media attention.

“If we had added another 10,000 seats at Buck Shaw, we’d have sold all of them too,” Hackett said of last weekend’s tournament, won by North Carolina.

And he can coach too: Coach Garry St. Jean of the Sacramento Kings, on why he hired recently retired Princeton coach Pete Carril, 65:

“He smokes a quality cigar, he has a beautiful hairstyle, he has great tie attire and a fabulous Columbo trench coat. Above all that . . . what we got is a tremendous guy who has a wealth of knowledge about the game of life and basketball.”

Carril told the New York Daily News he has learned three things about his new city, Sacramento: How to get from his apartment to Arco Arena and the airport, and a couple of restaurants where they serve his favorite food, mashed potatoes.

Trivia answer: She won a gymnastics gold medal in the 1984 Olympic Games.

And finally: News that Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, football coach since 1941, is on the hot seat brings to mind a quip he made about his tenure earlier this year, when a friend told him how lucky he was to still be coaching at Grambling:

“That’s one way of looking at it. The other is, I haven’t had a promotion in 55 years.”