Calgary

When the CFL Colts open training camp at Towson State on Friday, offensive tackle Karl Nieberlein will at least be familiar with the territory.A four-year starter at Towson State who was passed over in last month's NFL draft, Nieberlein signed a one-year contract, with an option year, to play for Baltimore's Canadian Football League expansion team."

LANDOVER -- Anyone who pays even a moment's notice to professional sports is aware of how tough it is to win on the road. Helping the perception along, of course, is the fact coaches and players have been lamenting this circumstance for eons.Besides having to make a quick adjustment to playing in a building they probably haven't seen in a year -- the situation facing the Calgary Flames yesterday -- there's the often inhumane treatment handed out to travelers by the schedule-maker.Sometime last summer, someone in the NHL office probably figured out that the Flames were going to be a good team this season.

Calgary, Alberta It seems like sheer pandemonium, a scene out of an old silent, slapstick western movie. In the infield in front of the grandstand -- an oval enclosure of black dirt churned up by the hoofs of horses and cattle -- teams of horses hitched to small covered wagons and some 20 cowboys and their mounts are milling around without apparent rhyme or reason.Suddenly, at the sound of a loud, piercing horn, the horses and riders are galvanized into action. Riders mount their steeds, wagon drivers jump into their seats, and the wagons, four of them drawn by four-horse teams, cautiously maneuver around red-numbered, white-painted oil drums in a figure-eight configuration.

LANDOVER -- The Washington Capitals' streak that began before Thanksgiving is over.Robert Reichel's breakaway goal with 1:20 left broke a 4-4 tie and sent the Calgary Flames to a 6-4 victory over the Capitals last night before 12,917 at the Capital Centre.It was the Capitals' first home defeat since Nov. 20. In the interim, they compiled a 9-0-4 record, breaking the club's home unbeaten streak record of 12 set in 1982."Well, the streak came to an end after a good run," Washington coach Terry Murray said.

The Orioles have one of the greatest families in major-league baseball with the Ripkens -- Cal Sr., Cal Jr. and Bill.But yesterday, with the help of the Seattle Mariners, a family named the Boones rallied to within Ripken-like status.The Mariners purchased the contract of 23-year-old second baseman Bret Boone from their Triple-A team, the Calgary Cannons, making the Boones the first third-generation family in major-league history."I haven't gotten too much sleep in the last 24 hours," said the youngest Boone with major-league experience.

It's only speculation, but don't bet against this daily double.The best guess is Brian Sutter will end up coaching the Calgary Flames not far from the family homestead in Viking, Alberta, and Dave King will be named coach in Toronto where Cliff Fletcher can tutor him to succeed him as the next Maple Leafs general manager in a few years.Flames general manager Doug Risebrough returns tomorrow from the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and has scheduled a meeting later this week with Sutter, whom St. Louis fired after losing this year to the Blackhawks in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

LONDON -- Still smarting from his rejection by the British Olympic Association, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards was in Canada yesterday to do something similar to what he had been banned from doing at the Winter Olympics in France."

ALBERTVILLE, France -- Most of them weren't around for the tragicomedy at Calgary four years ago, when the U.S. Winter Olympic team took its painful pratfall. Ryan "The Speck" Heckman was a middle-schooler in Steamboat Springs. John Aalberg was a Norwegian citizen. And Herschel Walker was a Dallas Cowboy. "I never even heard of a bobsled in high school," he said. "Now I'm on the Olympic team."More than three-quarters of the 181 American athletes who will ++ compete in the XVIth Winter Games beginning next week are newcomers.

-- Just as George Bush and Dan Quayle dislike Garry Trudeau, who tickles only their angry bones in "Doonesbury," so the Calgary Flames' Doug Gilmour thinks hockey cartoonist Dave Elston isn't funny.The center has reacted with pained fury to being lampooned. A Calgary Sun cartoon last week poked at him for his complaints that $750,000 a year, the sum awarded him by a NHL arbiter, wasn't enough.Elston caricatured Gilmour at an adopt-a-family table applying for funding as one of the holiday season's neediest families, evoking a Christmas promotion run by the paper.

LANDOVER -- Dino Ciccarelli was back, and all was right with the Washington Capitals last night at the Capital Centre.Ciccarelli, wearing a visor to protect a badly swollen left eye, seemed to light a fire under his teammates early with aggressive play along the boards and then contributed two assists in a 4-1 victory over the Calgary Flames.Sylvain Cote also had two assists. The Washington goals, by Randy Burridge, Mike Ridley, Al Iafrate and Peter Bondra, were scored by 9 minutes, 19 seconds into the second period.