Olympic documentary maker Bud Greenspan dies

Beffa said Greenspan died on Saturday from complications of Parkinson's disease.

Greenspan's films focused unashamedly on the Olympics' most triumphant moments.

"I spend my time on about the 99 percent of what's good about the Olympics and most people spend 100 percent of their time on the one percent that's negative," he said in an interview with ESPN.com almost 10 years ago.

"I've been criticized for seeing things through rose-colored glasses, but the percentages are with me."

While Greenspan acknowledged issues such as corruption and commercialism that sometimes tarnished the Olympic movement, he never lost his admiration for Olympians.

"They're two weeks of love," he said of the Games. "It's Like Never Never Land. Like Robin Hood shooting his arrow through the other guy's arrow."

Greenspan's best-known work was "The Olympiad," a 10-part series that he produced which was broadcast in more than 80 countries.

The series was the culmination of 10 years of research through more than three million feet of rare, archived film, hundreds of interviews and visits to dozens of nations.

He received lifetime achievement awards from the Directors Guild of America and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, as well as a Peabody and the Olympic Order award.

Greenspan was a 21-year-old radio reporter when he delivered his first Olympic story, from a phone box at Wembley stadium during the 1948 London Games.

His most recent work dealt with the rough cuts of films from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

At almost every Olympics in between, Greenspan could be usually be recognized with his trademark spectacles perched on his bald head.

Greenspan's career as an Olympic chronicler took off with a 1964 film about Jesse Owens returning to Berlin some 30 years after his gold-medal achievements there.

His work often included the lesser-known stories of Olympians who didn't win gold, but who overcame physical or personal obstacles just to compete.

He cited the last-place finish of Tanzanian marathoner John Stephen Ahkwari at Mexico City in 1968 as his favorite Olympic moment.

"He came in about an hour and a half after the winner. He was practically carrying his leg, it was so bloodied and bandaged," Greenspan told the ESPN.com interviewer. "I asked him, 'Why did you keep going?' He said, 'You don't understand. My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start a race, they sent me to finish it.'

"That sent chills down my spine," Greenspan said, "and I've always remembered it."

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