Button, champion and commentator, dies at 95

FIGURE SKATING

Dick Button smiles next to a painting of him while being honored at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in San Jose, Calif., in 2018. MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ, FILE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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By Richard Goldstein

The New York Times

Dick Button, whose passionate and often tart commentary on figure skating competitions became a television staple over six decades and made him the sport’s unofficial spokesperson, died Thursday in North Salem, N.Y. He was 95.

His death was confirmed by his son, Edward.

An Emmy winner, Button taught generations of TV audiences the nuances of triple toe loops, lutzes and axels and how judges assess a skater’s performance. But many fans may not have known that he was a two-time Olympic gold medalist himself, advancing modern figure skating in the late 1940s and early ‘50s with his dazzling leaps and spins, including the first triple jump in competition.

Button began working as a TV analyst in 1960 with CBS, covering the Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, Calif., at a time when figure skating and other winter events had yet to capture the American public’s imagination. CBS allocated only 15 minutes nightly to highlight the Olympic events it telecast during the day.

Button was soon contributing a lot more, as Winter Olympic coverage blossomed when ABC obtained the rights to the Innsbruck Games in 1964.

Working as an analyst at a variety of skating competitions — and for all three major networks — Button waxed enthusiastically about brilliant performances, but he didn’t hold back from voicing displeasure. When Christopher Bowman won the men’s singles at the 1992 U.S. championships, Button called his performance “ordinary, boring, slow, conservative and sedate.” He said afterward that he was not trying to be acerbic but hoped that his critique would motivate Bowman.

Long before he became known for his on-air observations, Button dominated the figure skating world with his athleticism.

He became the first American to win Olympic figure skating gold and the first skater to perform a double axel in competition when, at age 18, he captured the men’s singles at the 1948 Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. He won gold again at the 1952 Games in Oslo, when he executed the first competitive triple jump, a triple loop. He also conceived the flying camel spin, in which the free leg is extended backward with the knee held above hip level.

He won seven consecutive U.S. men’s titles (1946-52) and five straight world championships (1948-52). He was the only American to win a European singles championship, and he received the Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States in 1949, the first winter athlete to gain that honor.

Richard Totten Button was born July 18, 1929, in Englewood, New Jersey. His father, George, was chair of Button Industries, a company with varied business interests. Button received his first pair of skates as a boy of 11 or so, and his father soon sent him to a skating school in Lake Placid, New York. There, he was tutored by renowned Swiss instructor Gustave Lussi, who would guide him throughout his competitive years.

After Button won the men’s European singles in 1948, and Barbara Ann Scott of Canada captured the women’s title for the second consecutive year, officials barred non-European skaters from that event.

At St. Moritz, the teenage Button startled the skating world when he completed his double axel at a time when figure skating was very much a balletic affair.

He captured his second Olympic gold medal, making his triple jump, while a senior at Harvard. He went on to Harvard Law School and turned pro, joining the Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice, before receiving his law degree in 1956. He did not practice law, but he flourished as a businessperson, founding Candid Productions, which produced made-for-TV skating shows.

Roone Arledge, who transformed televised sports into a prime-time attraction as president of ABC Sports, recalled how he was enthralled by Button’s artistry under pressure back in 1959.

Arledge, working for NBC’s Channel 4 in New York at the time, was producing and directing a live program at the Rockefeller Center ice rink featuring the annual lighting of an enormous Christmas tree and a skating performance by Button. Although the audio feed for Button’s music went out over the air, the public address system at the rink malfunctioned, so that Button had to skate without hearing anything.

“He kept right on skating in total silence, hearing the music in his head and gliding and spinning flawlessly,” Arledge remembered in his memoir “Roone” (2003), published a year after his death. “Skater and overture finished impeccably in synch, and those few of us who witnessed it could only marvel at the incredible sangfroid and talent of this great performer. Years later, when ABC needed a figure-skating commentator as cool as he was well-informed, I knew exactly who to call.”

In 1962, a year after Arledge conceived “ABC’s Wide World of Sports,” Button began a long run analyzing major skating events for the program. He won an Emmy for outstanding sports personality on TV in 1981. Button’s last Winter Olympic broadcasting assignment came in 2010 at the Vancouver Games, the second time he provided coverage for NBC.

In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Emily Button, from his marriage to skating coach Slavka Kohout, which ended in divorce. Kohout died last March.