Dick Button, the double Olympic champion who revolutionized the figure skating by finishing the first triple jump in competition, then spun gold television with his condemned comment and winner of an Emmy, died Thursday. He was 95 years old.
Button died in North Salem, New York, her daughter, actress Emily Button, said The Washington Post.
Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of his sport – as well as diplomas from the Harvard College and the Harvard Law School – Button showed an acidulous spirit and a passion that defined figure skating on network television for more than five decades , from 1960 on CBS with the Winter Olympic Games from what was then known as Squaw Valley, California.
Moving to ABC in 1962 – where it would remain for the next 40 years – Button presided over a new age in the media and skating. With the telegenic stars Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Dorothy Hamill and Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner rising on the world scene during the 1960s and 70s, button pushed the values of antenna and production time that made figure skating From the lucrative centerpiece of winter games.
The public of school television on the nuances of judgment, “classic lines”, jumps and air speed, Button also taught at viewers (to their great joy) how to identify the terrible. The agitated arms, the legs folded, the insipid costumes and the modifications of agitated music received his anger without an excuse.
Of a particularly shocking musical selection, Button said: “There seems to have been a mixture in the recording studio.”
While spending most of his analyst career at ABC, often alongside Jim McKay on the anthology series on Saturday afternoon Large sports worldButton also worked for decades with Fleming and later with Terry Gannon at ABC and NBC.
“He kept me on my guard,” said Gannon in 2014. “He is one of those guys born without filter between his brain and his mouth, which makes him an excellent analyst.” Listen to some of his comments here.
Visionary of reality TV, button has created the ABC Kitsch longtime competition Superstars In 1973, opposing athletes of disparate sports against each other in dating of Decathlon Splashy.
A 1976 spin-off, Stars network battlehas reached an emblematic status during its original 12-year race, with its competitions featuring actors such as Robert Conrad, Farrah Fawcett, Gabe Kaplan, Penny Marshall and Hal Linden organized in the self-milked style by Howard Cosell. Over the years, several alarmakers have included one as recently as 2017.
Thanks to his well -named candida productions, Button has expanded financial opportunities for skaters, creating the world professional skiller championships and the Champions challenge as well as television specials for stars such as Hamill, who at the height of his Renowned was one of the best winning athletes in the world.
“Dick did the words” Lutz “and” Salchow “part of the daily vocabulary,” said 1988 Olympic champion Brian Botano, who helped Button to promote his 2013 book Press the Dick buttonConversation of an initiate on figure skating.
Richard Totten Button was born on July 18, 1929 in Englewood, New Jersey. He became serious about skating at 12, a little late in the match. However, in five years, he was the American champion, a title that he would win seven consecutive times.
In 1949, he received the Sullivan Award, which recognized the best American athlete throughout amateur sport.
Button remains the only American skater to capture Olympic gold twice. At 18 at the 1948 St. Moritz Games, he won the first double axel (2,1/2 revolutions) in competition to become the youngest male artistic skateman to have ever won; In 1952, in Oslo, Norway, he succeeded in his historic triple loop (while wearing an elegant white messache, to start). He also invented the rotation of flying camel.
As indicated in the 2011 book of Mary Louise Adams, Artistic impressions: figure skating, masculinity and limits of sport“Button inaugurated a new athletics in figure skating … Its jumps were higher and longer, its turns faster than those of its competitors. He described his approach as aggressive, exuberant and American skating. »»
From Davos to Paris, Button also won the simple male at the world championships for five consecutive years (1948-1952), a feat that he completed during his first cycle. He then retired from the competition to participate in a professional career, on tour with the Capades of ice during the holidays on the campus of his law studies.
He was a member of the first class enthroned at the renowned temple of the world of artists in 1976.
In the diffusion stand, it could be as emotional as it cut it. In 1996, when Rudy Galindo marked one of the greatest upheavals in the history of sport, winning the American title after years of heartbreaking backhand, button could barely contain his exuberance – or his tears.
When the winter games went to CBS in 1992, then to NBC in 2002, button remained with ABC, calling competitions through the aughts, even after a stroke of luck on the ice at 70 years Left with a skull fracture, concussions and hearing loss.
Dick Button and Peggy Fleming covered the 1984 Sarajevo Olympic Games for ABC.
ABC / Photofest
During the decades, he remained awareness of skating, openly criticizing a reworked judgment system (forced after a scandal at the Salt Lake 2002 games) which prompted painting programs by number, eroding the attraction of sport and of television.
Button notably remained outside the media frenzy surrounding Tonya Harding’s attack in 1994 against the Nancy Kerrigan rival. “I found it disgusting,” he said about what turned out to be one of the biggest scandals in the history of sport.
In 2006, Button returned to Olympic coverage for the first time in 18 years, working on loan in NBC at the Turin Games. Its limited role was so well received, NBC widened its functions at the time – a relationship that took place at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.
Embraged by a new generation on social networks for its live commentary live from Button, the button games of the 2014 and 2018 Games were, as always, exultants and devastating.
“I really don’t like gushing crying finishes … What is it?” He tweeted in Pyeongchang matches on skaters who considerably pretend the shock of performance that was right.
Even in the 90s, Button never abandoned his role as a guard. In 2020, he used the challenge of the American figure skating work to reprimand the International Skating Union for encouraging an outspoken excess on the ice.
He was also a judge on ABC Stars.
In addition to his daughter, the survivors include his son, Edward; The two come from his 1973-84 marriage with the figure trainer Slavka Kahout, who guided Lynn and other champions.
When asked by The New York Times In 2014, if he was tired of talking about figure skating, Button said no.
“Never,” he said. “Skating encourages you to discover so many art forms: dance, performance, athletics, history, choreography, even haute couture. How could we get tired?
Deborah Wilker is a professional artistic skater.
