Olympic Skating Legend Dick Button Useless at 95

Dick Button, America’s first Olympic gold medalist in determine skating, is useless, and the legend’s passing comes on what was already a darkish day for the game.

Button died Thursday within the Upstate New York city of North Salem … in response to his youngsters, who first confirmed his demise within the Washington Submit.

Maybe nobody in historical past’s had extra of an influence on U.S. determine skating than DB, who first dominated as a competitor within the Forties and Nineteen Fifties … after which grew to become a longtime broadcaster masking the game around the globe.

Dick nearly actually put America on the determine skating map — at a time when European nations dominated — when he received his first of 5 consecutive world determine skating titles in 1948. That was additionally the yr he received his first gold medal, on the age of 18. He stays the youngest man to ever obtain Olympic gold in determine skating.

He struck gold a second time, on the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, and did it with some severe flare — changing into the primary particular person to land a triple bounce, a triple loop to be actual, on his method to the medal stand.

After that Dick went professional … scoring an enormous (for the time) $150,000 contract with the Ice Capades. May not sound like a lot now, however it made him one of many world’s highest paid athletes — after which, in 1960, he began a legendary profession in broadcasting.

He coated the Winter Olympics that yr for CBS, earlier than leaping to ABC’s “Vast World of Sports activities” … the place he actually grew to become the voice of determine skating for generations of athletes and followers.

Dick was beloved for the actual fact he known as it as he noticed it, and had no points calling a skater’s program ugly, or as he as soon as labeled an Olympic efficiency, “slapped collectively.” His ultimate stint masking the Olympics got here in 2010 through the Vancouver video games.

He nonetheless holds 2 U.S. males’s data — his 2 Olympic gold medals, and his 7 nationwide championships.

In what looks like eerie timing, the undisputed icon of American skating died on the identical day the game mourned the deaths of the proficient younger skaters who have been on American Airways 5342, which crashed Wednesday evening into the Potomac River after colliding with a army helicopter. Fourteen individuals within the determine skating world — skaters, coaches and fogeys — have been onboard the flight which took off from Wichita, the place this yr’s U.S. Determine Skating Championship was held.

Button is survived by his 2 youngsters. He was 95.