For The Record

Apologized
For baring his buttocks to a crowd that included the royal family of Monaco, German pole vaulter Tim Lobinger. After Lobinger's winning 19'4" vault in the World Athletics Final, he dropped his shorts to celebrate and jogged around the final turn on the track—which, fittingly, is known as "the bottom bend." Said Lobinger, "It's not something you plan. It just happens I knew I had underwear on." Alas, it was a G-string, and the IAAF is threatening a fine; testing positive for crack, so to speak, could cost Lobinger $5,000.

Died
Of liver cancer, former NFL defensive lineman Don Reese, 52, whose revelations in SI that cocaine use was rampant in the league first pushed the topic of drug use in sports into the national spotlight. In the story I'm Not Worth a Damn (SI, June 14, 1982), Reese told of getting high with teammates during games and on team flights, of drug dealers holding loaded guns to his head and of wrestling with suicidal thoughts. Reese, who had served a year in prison after his 1977 arrest for trying to sell cocaine to undercover police officers, also named names—including former Saints teammate Chuck Muncie, who denied the story, then checked into rehab a month later. The story turned into a p.r. fiasco for the NFL, which had to acknowledge its problem; the collective bargaining agreement signed in December '82 included the league's first drug testing policy. Reese's admissions of his own drug use in the story, however, were deemed a violation of his probation, and he was sentenced to six months in prison. Reese, the Dolphins' top pick in '74, made a brief return in '85 with the USFL's Birmingham Stallions, then retired and soon settled in Alabama, where he worked in his family's funeral home before opening one of his own. He is survived by five children and his wife of 29 years, Paulette.

Died
Of an apparent suicide, Kent Poole, 39, who played guard Merle Webb in Hoosiers, the 1986 movie based on tiny Milan High's run to the Indiana title. Police say Poole hanged himself from a tree near his Crawfordsville, Ind., home. Poole was himself a schoolboy hero who helped Western Boone ( Ind.) High to the '82 state semifinal. In Hoosiers, he exhorts his team to "win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance." Poole played Molly Ringwald's boyfriend in Fresh Horses (1988) before returning to his family's 2,500 acre Indiana farm. A father of three who was going through a divorce, Poole had struggled with depression. " Kent had a real purity and sincerity on camera," said Hoosiers' writer Angelo Pizzo, who spoke to Poole a week before his death. "He was a rock and as close to a true Hoosier as anyone I've ever met."

BECKHAM'S WORLD
WE'RE JUST LIVING IN IT
In Iran—where he's the first Westerner in ads since the 1979 Islamic revolution—Becks has gone undercover. Billboards of him hawking Castrol oil were draped in black cloth last week by religious leaders upset by the influence of Western culture; TV ads have also been reedited to cover Beckham's bare legs. Meantime, a family from Truro, England, is going a long way to see the gams that have launched a thousand kicks. Phil and Derry Hodges are selling their house and moving, next week, with their three children to Spain expressly to follow Beckham's career with Real Madrid. They're packing six giant boxes of Beckham memorabilia. Says daughter Jenna, 14, their oldest: "I love Becks ... my destiny is to marry [his son] Brooklyn and sing with [his wife] Posh."