OSWEGO, N.Y. – In the ageless Aesop fable The Tortoise and the Hare, the former of the two combatants ended up celebrating a victory by remaining slow and steady across the race distance.

However, Sunday night at Oswego Speedway, seventeen-year-old Tyler Thompson turned that classic script on its head and wrote his own page of history at the five-eighths-mile oval in the process.

Thompson stunned the supermodified world by demolishing the field to win the 63rd annual Budweiser Int’l Classic. The Fulton, N.Y. teenager was a rabbit from the word go, blasting past polesitter Brandon Bellinger on lap 11 of the 200-lapper and never looking back as he opened up a near half-track advantage at times through the race.

Though various combatants closed to within a few car lengths at times during the afternoon, no one had anything for Thompson, who led the final 190 laps uncontested en route to his first Classic victory.

It marked the second-career supermodified win at Oswego for Thompson, who triumphed Aug. 10 at the Steel Palace to become the youngest winner in the 68-year history of the facility.

Sunday’s victory gave Thompson one more notch on his growing resume: that of the youngest Classic champion in the marquee event’s 63-year tenure.

“This is truly amazing,” a breathless Thompson said in victory lane. “I’m just speechless right now.”

Thompson started fifth, but it was clear from the drop of the green flag that his neon-trimmed No. 98 was the car to beat. He went from fourth to the lead in a three-lap sequence, passing Joe Gosek, Dave Jeff Abold and Bellinger in quick succession between the ninth and 11th revolutions.

After that, it was as if Thompson had brought a gun to a knife-fight, despite seven restarts that he had to navigate between the time that he took the race lead and the time that the checkered flag waved.

Each time, however – whether he had a buffer of lapped cars between himself and second place or, like in the late laps, he had Dave Shullick Jr. on his tail – Thompson was able to pull away from the field.

Thompson even made controlling the gap look effortless, thanks in part to guidance from the infield.

“I had one of my guys, Doug, down here the whole time,” Thompson said. “He helped me through this race and that, combined with a really, really fast car, is what made it all happen for us today.”

Sunday’s score was one, Thompson noted, that went according to plan – just not the plan he intended on using at the start of the weekend.

“Getting out front and trying to run away wasn’t what I wanted to do coming into this, but then I checked the forecast and I saw some rain,” Thompson recalled. “I said to myself, ‘well, it’s like a 50-50 shot (that it would rain), so I’ll just go for it and see what happens.’

“I can’t believe it actually worked.”

Shullick spent the entire second half of the race chasing Thompson, taking second from Bellinger on lap 101 and trying every trick in the book to track down the leading No. 98.

A final restart with 20 to go, set up after Lou LeVea Jr. found the turn one wall four laps prior, gave Shullick a final shot to try and motor around the outside, but Thompson was simply too strong.

“That was a good run. Our car was excellent,” noted Shullick. “A half to three quarters of the way through the race, I was cruising and I thought I had the car to beat … because I saw him (Thompson) up running up front and I was like, ‘there’s no way he’s gonna make it. There’s no way.’ And then finally, at about lap 180. I’m like, ‘he might actually make it.’

“We had to turn up the wick there at the end, but he had just enough to hold me off, so hats off to him and his whole crew,” Shullick added. “That thing they had was a bullet tonight.”

Michael Barnes completed the podium, his fifth-straight top-three finish in Classic competition, with Jeff Abold and Doug Didero following in fourth and fifth, respectively.

Bellinger faded from the pole to sixth at the finish after leading the first 10 laps, ahead of Chris Perley, Alison Sload, Michael Muldoon and Keith Shampine.

Recently-crowned track champion Otto Sitterly, who was running third inside of the final 20 laps, was forced to pit road with nine to go with a broken transfer arm. He ended up 16th in the official results.

As for Thompson, tears pricked his eyes as the reality of his accomplishment began to set in.

“Man, I’m feeling a whole lot of emotions,” he admitted. “I’m happy now, but about halfway through that race, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ve got it.’ By the end of it, though, I was like, ‘OK, this is a little bit better.’

“To be a Classic champion is beyond my wildest dreams and I’m just so grateful for everyone’s support.”

The finish:

Tyler Thompson, Dave Shullick Jr., Michael Barnes, Jeff Abold, Doug Didero, Brandon Bellinger, Chris Perley, Alison Sload, Michael Muldoon, Keith Shampine, Ben Seitz, Logan Rayvals, Jack Patrick, Camden Proud, Dan Connors, Otto Sitterly, Jamie Timmons, Jerry Curran, Dave McKnight, Bobby Santos, Dave Gruel, Davey Hamilton, Brian Osetek, Lou LeVea Jr., Dave Danzer, Hal Latulip, Joe Gosek, Tim Snyder, Dan Bowes, Bob Bond, Todd Stowell, Lou LeVea Sr., Jason Spaulding, Aric Iosue.

Restricted free agent Ivan Barbashev agreed to terms with the St. Louis Blues on a two-year contract worth an annual average value of $1.475 million, the team announced Sunday.

Barbashev, 23, played in 80 games for the Blues in their Stanley Cup season of 2018-19, recording 14 goals and 12 assists for 26 points -- all career highs.

The Russian center, the last remaining restricted free agent for the Blues to re-sign, added three goals and three assists in the playoffs as part of the Blues' fourth line.

Hannover 96 and U.S. youth international striker Sebastian Soto is unlikely to move before the close of the transfer window on Sept. 2, with one source close to the player putting the chances at "five percent."

Hannover issued a statement last Thursday that Soto was in advanced talks with a club from outside Germany about a transfer. The source said Belgian Pro League side Club Brugge as well as Liga Portugal powerhouse Benfica are among the interested clubs.

- Carlisle: The story behind Soto's rise up the U.S. ranks
- Stream games LIVE on ESPN+

But the source added that Hannover's demands for a transfer fee in the seven-figure range have put off interested suitors, especially given the fact that Soto's contract expires at the end of the current campaign, allowing him to sign a pre-contract in as soon as four months. Hannover offered Soto a three-year deal earlier this summer, but the player prefers a two-year contract.

Soto, 19, is scheduled to travel to Chula Vista, Calif. on Monday in order to take part in a training camp for the U.S. U23 national team. That gives him scant time to pass a physical and actually sign a deal.

Soto has become increasingly frustrated over his lack of playing time this season, which consists of a solitary four-minute stint against Jahn Regensburg in the second game of the season. Hannover, now competing in the 2. Bundesliga after last season's relegation, has scored just six goals in five league and cup matches, but three of those came against bottom-of-the-league SV Wehen Wiesbaden. Hannover currently sits in 12th place through five matches, with its five points putting it level with five other clubs.

Soto scored four goals for the U.S. at the FIFA U20 World Cup last spring, a tournament in which the Americans reached the quarterfinals. He has since been in demand at international level, with Chile -- the birth country of his father -- expressing interest in having Soto file a one-time switch to represent La Roja.

Game of the weekend

In these days of infinite possibilities for interaction between football and the watching public, there should really be button everyone can press which forces a game of football to be extended indefinitely. You can only use it once a season, but if enough people press the button, then the teams must keep on playing for our amusement.

That game this weekend would have most certainly been the north London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, a chaotic mess of a fixture that was nonetheless massively entertaining to watch, two sides with just the right balance of strengths and flaws to produce a spectacle like that. It was 2-2 but it could have been 5-5. More of this please.

Arsenal's problem of the weekend

For the neutral, the element of chaos that David Luiz and Granit Xhaka bring to Arsenal is extremely entertaining. For Arsenal themselves, it's more of a problem.

These are two players who between them have played in six different countries, winning five league titles, who have nearly 900 senior club appearances and 132 international caps. And yet they cost Arsenal goals with challenges that you'd reprimand a giddy teenager for, Luiz storming into a tackle that Son Heung-min merrily skipped past, Xhaka for some reason going to ground and ploughing through the same player to concede a penalty.

They will have to live with Luiz, because Arsenal frankly have nobody much better at centre-back. But in midfield, this should be the last we see of Xhaka in a game of much significance. He's simply a liability.

- Ogden: Arsenal's rally buys Emery more time
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Tottenham's problem of the weekend

You could argue either way whether this was a good result or not for Spurs, but more interesting was Mauricio Pochettino's post-match suggestion -- and not for the first time -- that not everyone had been "100% focused" on Tottenham before this week.

The implication was that now the European transfer window is closing, attitudes will change and minds will concentrate on the job in hand. But will that automatically happen? Will Christian Eriksen immediately banish all thoughts of Real Madrid and get on with being brilliant for his current team? Will whoever else Pochettino was archly referring to only care about the badge on their chests?

And that's if you even accept this has been their problem. There's a strong sense that Pochettino is simply using the distractions of the transfer window to mask issues that have been festering for a while: their vulnerabilities at full-back, Hugo Lloris' form (though he made some vital saves at the Emirates), an increasing sense of disorder in midfield. None of those will be solved by the transfer window closing, so it will be interesting to see how Pochettino handles this from here.

- Spurs ratings: Son, Lloris 8/10 in derby
- Arsenal ratings: Lacazette, Aubameyang earn 8/10 each

Scuppered plans of the weekend

Brighton defender Dan Burn said before their defeat to Manchester City on Saturday that they had been working on a plan all week to deal with the defending champions. City scored their first goal after 71 seconds, calling to mind Mike Tyson's famous maxim that "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

It's a decent encapsulation of how nightmarish City are to face: you can spend hours figuring out how to stop them, how to beat them, looking for weaknesses...and then they're too good anyway, score after a minute and all your work is wasted.

Teething problems of the weekend

In the end the bigger surprise from Chelsea's 2-2 draw with Sheffield United was not Frank Lampard's side giving up a two-goal lead, but that it took until the last few minutes for the equaliser to come.

Lampard is learning on the job and will grow from his mistakes, but at the moment he's doing a lot of learning and growing. Bringing on the 18-year-old Billy Gilmour for his senior debut in the last few minutes as United were gaining momentum, for example, didn't look like the shrewdest move: Lampard defended it by pointing out Mateo Kovacic, the man who came off, was tired, but entrusting a rookie rather than someone with 52 Croatia caps -- weary or not -- was a significant gamble.

Maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on Lampard: after all, it's not his fault that Gilmour was the only midfielder on his bench. It also isn't his fault that Cesar Azpilicueta, the formerly rock solid, super-reliable Cesar Azpilicueta, is having a rotten start to the season: both United goals came from his side, one when he was easily turned and nutmegged, the other when he lost track of Theo Robinson's run. This column made the point a few weeks ago, but Lampard has enough problems without having to worry about a player none of his predecessors had to worry about.

Management of the weekend

But maybe pointing out Chelsea's weaknesses is missing the point. "We're not at Chelsea today because it's the third round of the FA Cup," said Blades manager Chris Wilder after the game, "we're here because we're in the Premier League, and we're going toe-to-toe with them, and they're in the Premier League."

Much has been said and written about Sheffield United's innovative tactics and style of play this season, but surely the key to all of that is that their players have the confidence to actually pull those ambitious plans off. This is where Wilder's man management comes in, and him reiterating to his squad that grounds like Stamford Bridge is where they belong is part of that.

By all accounts Wilder's assistant Alan Knill is the tactical brains behind this United team, but it's thanks to Wilder that they put the theory into practice.

Possible delusion of the weekend

"The last three games, we know we deserved to win all three. That doesn't give us any comfort in the table. But it does give us comfort that we know we're doing the right things, we're on the right track."

It's possible that the relentlessly optimistic Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is just trying to keep his troops' spirits up, in his comments following their 1-1 draw with Southampton. But to take them at face value is to wonder if we all have indeed been watching the same games as him, rather than some much more favourable computer simulation in which Manchester United have been...well...good.

Spat of the weekend

Liverpool are now so good that Sadio Mane tantrum, upset at some unspecified person for some unspecified reason after being taken off against Burnley, can be spun as a positive for them (fighting spirit, competitiveness, etc., and so on) without it sounding too ridiculous. Fairly ridiculous, sure, but not excessively so.

They're top of the league, have a 100% record and are already seven points clear of Manchester United. Maybe Mane was just trying to make things a bit more interesting.

Luckiest moment of the weekend

All that said, would things have turned out the same for Liverpool at Burnley had Trent Alexander-Arnold's cross not looped wildly off Chris Wood and into the net to give them the lead? Perhaps, but to that point it had been a tough encounter, and that goal punctured Burnley's resolve.

Goal of the weekend

What is it about a perfectly-judged lob that is so satisfying? Is it the skill? Is it that they're relatively unusual? Is it that we can see earlier than most other goals that they're going to be goals, so we have time to savour them? Whatever it is, Jamie Vardy's first in Leicester's win over Bournemouth was an absolute peach, and we could watch it over and over again.

New VAR issue of the weekend

Another weekend, another round of decisions that VAR could have corrected but didn't. But the weekend has also revealed another side effect of the system, which is referees escaping the blame for poor decisions based on misunderstandings about how it is used.

Kevin Friend's absurd decision to deny Aston Villa a goal because Jack Grealish had 'dived' -- this despite him having been fouled twice in the space of half a second and not even claiming a foul -- was initially deemed a failure of VAR, complaints broadly directed towards the fact that the decision hadn't been reversed. But it apparently could not have been referred, a subsection of the implementation that hasn't been well communicated to the general public, meaning more confusion was created.

You could argue that these are merely teething problems which will be ironed out as the season continues, or you could simply think that a new issue will emerge either week, something we would not encounter had we all just been adults and accepted that referees get things wrong sometimes.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and cornerback Joe Haden have agreed to a 2-year, $22 million extension that includes a $16.8 million signing bonus, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Haden, 30, was entering the final year of a three-year, $27 million deal that he signed before the 2017 season.

Pablo Sandoval grounded out as a pinch hitter on Sunday in what could be his final game with the San Francisco Giants.

The 33-year-old former World Series MVP was activated off the injured list earlier in the day for a final at-bat under retiring manager Bruce Bochy.

Sandoval will undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery on his right elbow on Wednesday.

The popular "Kung Fu Panda'' drew a loud, lengthy cheer when he went to the on-deck circle in the seventh inning Sunday. The crowd at Oracle Park rose for a standing ovation, and fans held phones to take pictures and video of the moment when Sandoval walked to the plate following Brandon Crawford's single.

After taking a first-pitch strike from reliever Luis Perdomo, Sandoval hit a weak grounder to third baseman Manny Machado.

The Padres won Sunday's game 8-4.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.