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Olympic Fever

For almoit 50 years,
filmmaker/author
Bud Greenspan
has covered
Olympic athletes
and their dramatic
achievements.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

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years of reporting on
Olympic athletes convinced
Bud Greenspan that one
characteristic separates
these champions from the rest of the
population — an unrelenting need to
excel.
Greenspan, a radio-television-film
communicator, zeroes in on that trait
during a TV show profiling five gold
medal winners he has come to know
— Romanian gymnast Nadia
Comaneci, American decathlete Dan
O'Brien, Australian swimmer
Duncan Armstrong, Ethiopian
marathon legend Abebe Bikila and
Russian Greco-Roman wrestler
Alexander Karelin.
These profiles, presented in antici-
pation of the year 2000 games in

Australia, air at 10 p.m. Sunday,
Aug. 20, in the Showtime special

Bud Greenspan's Favorite Stories of
Olympic Glory.
"Winning athletes don't even
know how dedicated they are,"
explains Greenspan, 74, the writer,
producer and director of the pro-
gram. "When I tell them that they
are amazing, they look at me like I'm
crazy. They're certain everybody does
the same thing."
Greenspan chose these particular
athletes to interview and capture
with archival footage because of
information that was new and inter-
esting to him, assuming it also would
be new and interesting to others.
"Since 1952, I have written, pro-
duced and directed more than 150
films on Olympic athletes and their
dramatic achievements," says
Greenspan. "Our films have featured

One To Watch

Lenny Krayzelburg, whose family left Ukraine in 1989 to escape anti-
semitism, set his sights on two gold medals when he entered trials for the
Sydney Olympics. The 24-year-old swimmer, a U.S. citizen since 1995, corn-
-
petes in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.
On Monday night, when his U.S. competition ended, Krayzelburg came
closer to achieving both his goalssby scoring best in both trials, although he
fell short of his own world record on the 100-meter race..
"We've been watching Lenny for over a year as the strongest Jewish con-
tender this time around," says Bud Greenspan, who has devoted his career to
reporting on Olympic athletes. "Lenny's different from - Mark Spitz because he
competes in backstroke."
Krayzelburg, expressing confidence he can swim fast enough to win at the
Olympics, broke world records in both events at last year's Pan Pacific
Championships in Sydney and won gold medals in both the 100-meter and
200-meter backstroke at the 1998 World Championships.
Although he had started swimming with the Red Army Club in
Ukraine at age 5, Krayzelburg let go of his interest as an immigrant
teenager working 30 hours a week in his new country. While studying at

8/18
2000

80

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