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Dick button, figure skating champion and commentator, dies at 95

Dick Button, whose passionate and often sour comments on Skating competitions have become a television resistance for over six decades and made it an unofficial spokesman for sport, died on Thursday in North Salem, NY, 95.

His death was confirmed by his son Edward.

As an Emmy winner, button generations of TV audience teaches the nuances of Triple Toe Loops, Lutzes and Axels and how the judges rate the performance of a skater. But many fans may not have known that he himself was twice the Olympic gold medalist and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, progresses with his dazzling jump and spins, including the first triple jump in competition.

Button worked as a TV analyst with CBS in 1960 and reported on the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, at a time when the figure of Skating and other winter events did not yet have to hold on to the American public’s imagination. CBS only distributed 15 minutes night to highlight the Olympic events that were broadcast during the day.

The chief reporters of the network for the Olympic Games, Walter Cronkite, Chris Schenkel and Bud Palmer, were “very at sea where winter sports are affected,” wrote Jack Gould, a television columnist for the New York Times. But he added that button and his colleague Skating commentator Andrea Lawrence gave the reporting “a decisive elevator” as “a few helpful words were allowed to penetrate”.

Button soon contributed a lot more than the 1964 Winter Cover Olympions received the rights to the Innsbruck games.

As a analyst for a variety of skating competitions – and for all three large networks – button was enthusiastic about brilliant achievements, but he did not stop to express disgrace.

When Christopher Bowman won the men of the men at the United States Championships in 1992, button described his performance “usually, boring, slow, conservative and sedated”. Then he said that he didn’t try to be Acerbian, but hoped that his criticism would motivate Bowman.

“I am very sensitive that it may not be fun to hear these criticisms for you,” button told Times in 2006, “but I also know that this is a sport that is no longer apple pie and motherhood. They earn large, large sums of money – and take away someone else. “

He said NPR in 2010: “I don’t think someone wants to sit there and listen to, as someone says:“ Oh, ooh, ooh, wasn’t that nice? It wasn’t easy for words. ‘To the hell with it. “

Long before he became known for his on-air observation, the figure of Skating world dominated with its sportiness.

He was the first American to win Olympia -ice skating gold, and the first skater to carry out a double axel competition in the competition when he was singles at the winter games of 1948 in St. Moritz, Switzerland at the age of 18 , conquered. He won gold again at the 1952 games in Oslo when he carried out the first competitive triple Jump, a triple loop. He also designed the Flying Camel Spin, in which the free leg with the knee is extended to the back of the hip level.

He won seven in a row in the United States (1946-52) and five direct world championships (1948-52). He was the only American who won a European singles championship and received the Sullivan Award in 1949 as an outstanding amateur athlete in the USA, the first winter athlete who received this honor.

Richard Totten Button was born on July 18, 1929 in Englewood, New Jersey. His father George was the chairman of Button Industries, a company with different business interests. Dick received his first pair of ice skates as a boy from 11 or so, and his father soon sent him to a skating school in Lake Placid, NY, he was taught by the renowned Swiss trainer Gustave Lucci, who would lead him during his competition.

After Button won the men’s European singles in 1948 and Barbara Ann Scott from Canada conquered the women’s title for the second time in a row, the officials banned the officials from this event.

In St. Moritz, the teen button frightened the skating world when he completed his double axel at a time when skating figures was a ballet.

“He made five jumps and spins that no other skater tried and made everything look simple,” reported the Associated Press. “Sometimes he seemed to hang in the air. In others, he turned with such a speed that he was only a blurring. “

Button also became aware of the short black jacket he wore to compare himself to the daylight background of the snow -covered Swiss mountains that were visible from the Olympic Olympics. “God, it was a cause of Célèbre,” recalled button. “Here I looked like a waiter or, as some friendly people said, in the dress code of a naval officer.”

He conquered his second Olympic gold medal and made his triple jump while he was a senior in Harvard. He drove to Harvard Law School and became a professional, joining the ice capades and holidays on ice before he graduated in law in 1956. He did not practice a law, but he flourished as a businessman and founded Candid Productions who produced do -it -yourselfades -TV skating shows.

Roone Arledge, who, as President of ABC Sports on television, was transformed into a lane time attraction on television, remembered how he was under pressure from Button’s Artistry in 1959.

Arledge, who worked for NBCS Channel 4 in New York at the time, produced and headed a live program on the ice rink in Rockefeller Center with the annual lighting of a huge Christmas tree and a skating performance of Button. Although the audio feed for Button’s Music went over the air, the public address system had to be supplied on the ice rink, so that this button had to skate without hearing anything.

“He stayed in total silence, listened to the music in his head and slides and turned without errors,” remembered Arledge in his memoir “Roone” (2003), which was released a year after his death. “Skater and overture ended perfectly synchronously, and the few of us experienced the witness, only the incredible Sangfroid and the talent of this great actor were amazed. Years later, when ABC needed a figure skating commentator who was as cool as he was well informed, I knew exactly who to call. “

1962, a year after Arledge designed “Abcs Wide World of Sports”, button began a long analysis of the most important skating events for the program. In 1981 he won an Emmy for outstanding sports personality on television.

The widespread TV reporting on the Olympic Winter Games played an important role in the development of Figure Skating as a popular spectator sport, with a button at the top of the comment.

He was amazed at the art of sport and added his sportiness. “It’s a theater form,” he said once the Times. “Skater always have a foot in sports and the others in the theater company.”

Button was the life of a actor for his part. As Peter van Gleck, he appeared in the TV program “Hans Brinker in Hallmark Hall of Fame” “Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates” and in revivals by “South Pacific” and “Mister Roberts” in the New York city center.

He survived a few frightening episodes. In July 1978, he injured a serious head injury when he was among several men who were attacked by a group of young people in the New York central park by random. On December 31, 2000, on December 31, 2000, he suffered a broken skull and a serious brain injury when he fell while skating on an ice rink near his house in West Chestian County, NY. After that he rarely rarely ran free time.

The last winter Olympia radio order from Button took place in 2010 at the Vancouver Games, the second time that he reported NBC.

In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Emily Button, by his marriage to the skating trainer Slavka Kohout, who ended in the divorce. Ms. Kohout died last March.

Button made his opinion very clear as the best -known analyst or “narrator” of Figure Skating because he preferred to describe his role.

As for the increasingly bright outfits of the skaters: “Sometimes I feel trapped in a wind tunnel in the costume department of the Metropolitan Opera House,” he noticed when he covered the Vancouver games.

But he remained a lot of the showman. Asked in Vancouver to comment on the emotions that were shown in the so-called Kiss-and-Cry area, in which skaters are waiting for their points, he said to The Times: “It’s television, honey, come. It is what television does. “

Ash Wu Reported reports.

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