Filmmaker Bud Greenspan recently passed away on December 25.  He was known for his Olympic Games documentary films, which were not mere highlight compilations, but rather artistic documentaries which focused on "stories that resonate". 

Universal Sports will air a nine-night retrospective of his work, featuring the Olympic Games from 1984 through 2006, beginning on New Year's night.  For this editor, the best aspects are the compelling cinematography, lengthy profiles of the athletes, and voice-of-God narration employed in showing the preparation of the athletes and the drama of the competitions.  The artistic documentaries of athletic competition remind me in a way of NFL films with John Facenda, but are more cinematic, and any history of film documentaries of the Olympic Games will almost always include Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl, but of course Greenspan doesn't have her troubling history.  The Greenspan retrospective is worth the effort to seek out in the coming week on Universal Sports, which is available over-the-air or on cable in many U.S. cities, and tune in to at least a few of the broadcasts of work by this landmark filmmaker. 
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The weather has been in the news recently, with the cold spell in Europe and the heavy snow in the upper Midwest a few weeks ago and in the Northeast this past weekend.  They have had some shorter tours on snow-cleared courses in the Netherlands--a schedule can be viewed at the natuurijs section of KNSB's website under the Kalender Toertochten tab.    Also, a video search of youtube is always entertaining and yielded a few recent videos I embedded here...I like the ATV snowplow in the video above that looks like an AMC Pacer that appears just before the 2 minute mark. 

Not sure what will happen with the canals in Illinois.  The weather has been cold and the canals snow covered.   A warm rain is coming Friday, which may wash away the snow and leave smooth "black ice" (best case) or may just simply leave slush and weak ice or open water.  As always, firsthand reports are welcome--this editor probably will not be able to make a trip anytime soon. 
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Winter is here 12/08/2010
 
Picture
The Hennepin Canal with a thin layer of snow cover in February 2009.
A few updates now that its winter. 

US Speedskating has been back in action with the season well under way.  Illinois skaters have continued to perform well at the national and international levels, with numerous gold medal finishes at World Cup stops for Shani Davis in long track, while on the short track, Katherine Reutter has managed numerous gold medal finishes as well.  But since this website is more about long-distance ice skating, a special mention of Jonathan Kuck of Champaign, IL, for his continued success at the international level with a second place finish in the 5000 meter event at the meet in Berlin, a third at 5000 meters in Heerenveen, and a top-ten finish at 10,000 meters in Hamar.  Results are available at the US Speedskating website or the International Skating Union's pages on Speed Skating or Short Track.  It’s too bad that Universal Sports hasn’t had the television coverage of speed skating as they had in the past few years, but some of the meets have been webcast and perhaps a search might yield webcasts of foreign broadcasts.
 
Interesting to see the Friends of the Hennepin Canal launching the Renaissance Project, which would restore several of the locks to working order, with the goal of having approximately 50 miles (80.5 km) of waterway available for recreational cruising.  The canal is fragile given its age, and has ongoing maintenance needs in the face of erosion, damage from weather and the elements, and continued siltation and the occasional natural debris (trees, etc.) falling into the canal.   Learn more about the project on the link above.  Or better yet, get involved or make a donation.  Maybe someday there will be as much enthusiasm for the Hennepin Canal as there is for the canals of the Elfstedentocht route in the Netherlands, where the Dutch government "...is spending the equivalent of $650 million to dredge the canals...to assure they are an even five to six feet in depth. That is because the canals are increasingly used for other events patterned after the 11-Cities Tour, even when there is no ice, [such as] rolling-skating races, and bicycle races, rowing races, and even, last summer, a race of solar-driven boats.” [NY Times: At Dutch National Pastime's Top Event, Mother Nature Wields the Starting Gun, Feb 26, 2007]   This blog wrote about the rowing marathon in a post last June, complete with links to a few videos.
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