Two-time Olympic gold medalist, five-time world champion Dick Button, the Emmy-winning voice of Olympic figure skating, died Thursday at 95. His son Edward confirmed his death, but he didn’t reveal the cause or where he died when speaking to The Associated Associated Press.
A daring and resourceful skater, Button was born July 18, 1929, in Englewood, New Jersey, and was the first post-World War II U.S. champion in 1946. Two years later, he won his first Olympic gold medal in 1948 at the Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, when he became the first skater to execute a double axel in competition and the first American man to win Olympic figure skating gold. He won back-to-back gold medals at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo by performing the first triple jump. He introduced the one-footed flying camel spin, also known as the “Button Spin,” and was the first to execute three consecutive double jumps. He remains the only person to hold the national, North American, European, world, and Olympic titles simultaneously.
After claiming his fifth consecutive world championship in 1952, Button left the amateur ranks of skating and joined the ranks of the professional Ice Capades. He obtained his law degree from Harvard in 1956.
The U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash in 1961 en route to the world championships, which meant that that year’s competition was canceled. Button persuaded ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge to broadcast the event one year later on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, thus beginning his second career as a broadcaster. He was a familiar face (and voice) at ABC appearing on figure skating telecasts and Wide World of Sports. He was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Sports Programming for his commentary at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, where Peggy Fleming won gold.
He started doing the ABC Winter Olympics broadcasts through the 1980s. When the other networks bought the rights to the Games, he served as an alternate for NBC at the 2006 Turin Olympics and left his ABC broadcasting career in 2008 when the network ended its figure skating coverage. Established his Candid Productions in 1959, but in 1973, he suggested an innovative TV program, The Superstars, in which famous athletes competed in sports not traditionally within their realm. According to former ABC Sports executive Don Ohlmeyer, the show attracted an 18 rating at 1 p.m. on a Sunday — significantly higher than the NBA’s 3 rating that same weekend.
As president of Candid Productions, Button also organized other sports competitions, like Battle of the Network Stars and The World Challenge of Champions. Besides sports, he helped produce Broadway shows, including Sweet Sue (1987) with Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave and Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase (1989).
Appearing on screen, he played himself in The Bad News Bears Go to Japan and voiced himself on Animaniacs in 1995. He also did a role as an announcer on a 1992 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. His literary endeavors included his two books: Dick Button on Skates and Instant Skating.
