RIP Dick Button

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[Cheriehoop]

Wonder if he aware of the plane crash last night? He was a winter Olympic skating broadcasting staple for decades.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

Wonder if he aware of the plane crash last night? He was a winter Olympic skating broadcasting staple for decades.

Wow. Such a really weird coincidence. He came out of the same Boston Skating Club that lost a couple young skaters. Plus one of the mom's was a Cuse alumni.

Button was also connected to the 1961 plane crash that killed the US Skating team in Belgium. He started his long announcing career the following year after he convinced Roone Arledge to broadcast it on Wide World of Sports. After that, he seemed to be on TV quite often.

I did not know he was a Harvard Law School graduate.

Dick Button, first U.S. Olympic figure skating gold medalist, dies at 95

He was the winner of two Olympic gold medals and five consecutive world championships. A cause of death has not been provided.

www.wapt.com

 

[SWC75]

MSN

Both of his Olympic events were held outdoors. Skaters competed to music being played on records and were also judged on compulsory figures, or tracing patterns on the ice.

“It was, in a sense, far more difficult because of the complexity and school figures and compulsory figures and the time — and the all-consuming time — that took,” he said.

Button also won seven consecutive U.S. titles — the first at age 16 — and five consecutive world titles, succeeding while also a student at Harvard. No man has matched either streak since.

"He was the guy that changed the sport forever," 1984 Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton said in 2024. "So many people that came after him learned from him. ... His presence and his greatness and the explosive nature of his athletic ability was beyond spectacular. And he did it all outdoors — all of it outdoors. I can't even imagine skating at that level, outdoors, and he did it in 1948 all the way through 1952."

 

[SWC75]

 

[SWC75]

 

[SWC75]

 

[upperdeck]

Taking the figure skating out of the skating was a strange thing. It was the one part that everyone could actually see how well people did.

 

[Newhouser]

He was an excellent commentator too. Genuine and about the sport not himself (unlike say Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinsky).