Edmund Fitzgerald: Race Cancelled

[seafarer62]

Gordon Lightfoot and the Edmund Fitzgerald are such a historical part of the Duluth and North Shore area. We were up on the North Shore of Lake Superior on vacation that past five days and this article mentioning Gord was in the Duluth newspaper on Oct. 2:

Duluth News Tribune: Editorial Page


Our view: End of Edmund Fitz race adds to memorial of honored name
Associated Press - 10/02/2007

It’s a little odd, yet still bittersweet, to lament an event that has met its end, named for a boat that, too, is no more, named for a man who also has gone on.

The name Edmund Fitzgerald, belonging to an insurance company executive who died in 1986, is best known for the mammoth ore carrier bearing his name that sank in Lake Superior in 1975, taking with it the lives of 29 crew members. It became a household word when Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the disaster in song.

But it was also the fitting name of another giant: the ultramarathon along the shores of the lake where iron men — and women — of a different nature embedded their mark in history and folklore.

“The 1990 World Championship at the Edmund Fitz is still considered the greatest 100K road race in history,” Bill Wenmark, the event’s founder and race director, told the News Tribune’s editorial page staff yesterday. While his claim may sound like bravado, he qualified it with citations from the racing world.

“It was just like the Olympics,” he said. “It was truly remarkable to be in the presence of all these people that you normally only read about in books. And there they were, sitting in front of you at the DECC in Duluth.”

Another memorable moment came in 1984, when47-year-old Sandra Kiddy beat all racers of both genders to become the first woman ever to win an ultramarathon overall. One of those she bested was the Duluth local favorite.

“She passed Harry Sloan about 100 meters from the finish line,” Wenmark recalled. “He was just staggering. His legs looked like Gumby. And you could see Sandra coming and coming and coming and Harry struggling.”

So what happened to the race more recently? In a way, it may have imploded from its own popularity, attracting fewer Harry Sloans and far more entrants from the Twin Cities. The cost for relay teams could reach $2,500, Wenmark said, to cover driving, lodging and transporting entrants to their various starting points.

Yet the race may not be over for good. Among ideas Wenmark is exploring is hosting a reunion race some year, or transferring administration to the Duluth Family YMCA, which has expressed an interest, or bringing it to the Twin Cities “where the customers are,” he said.

To that, he was asked to entertain a fourth choice: Hosting a truly ultra, ultra marathon 140 miles from Duluth to the Cities.

“You’d have to be certifiable to do that,” he laughed.

But that well may have been what onlookers initially thought of the 62-mile racers a quarter century ago. As for the runners of that day and all who came after, we’ll cherish the memories, just as we do the song, the insurance executive, and the valiant men of the fated boat, all part of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

[johnfowles]

At very long last there has been a modicum of activity on the Newsgroup
A very competent guitar playing fan that I and many others have met a few times, either as a member of the short lived GL Tribute Band
or as part of last November's Delta Chelsea jam session, Matt Carl from Michigan
(in between he sent out a wondefful interpretation of Tattoo that finally turned me on the the merits of that great song)
Anyway Matt has found a wonderful gallery of pictures taken during the building of the Fitz. It is on the Great Lakes Maritine Institute site at:-
http://www.glmi.org/fitz/gallery/default.htm
I looked at the gallery's 7 pages each featuring 5 mostly Black and White pix (except for 4 on page 7)
and decided I'd like to show at least one here for the many avid Fitz fans to enjoy
However I quickly found that the site's code and images are heavily protected against copying anything as any such attempt
merely brings up this "get orf" warning:-
"This Function Not Available, please enjoy the gallery \n Copyright Great Lakes Maritime Institute. All Rights
Reserved. \n This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed"
by looking in detail at the pages code (Internet Exploder>View menu >Source I worked out that one picture should have the
URL:-
http://www.glmi.org/fitz/images/fitzustclair.jpg
but it refused to display
Luckily there is more than one way to skin a cat, sorry fellow cat lovers
So once any picrure is viewable it is easy to make a screenshot , using my currently prefferred freeware screenshot
program:-
Gadwin Printscreen

"Gadwin PrintScreen captures the contents of the screen with a single keystroke. The captured screen can then be sent to the
printer, or saved to disk as a file in 6 different graphics file formats."
I was therfore able to make a pair of screenshots:-
Each page has this header

• 
  and whilst one of the 4 colour pix would open directly as a jpg
  even though I deduced by examining the pages HTML code the one I liked the best also would not open
  at http://www.glmi.org/fitz/images/fitzunderwe.jpg
  so here is my second screenshot:-
•