Dick Button, 95 years old, died of figure skating champion and television commentator

Dick Button (Dick Button) full of enthusiastic and often sour comments on the pattern skating competition has become a TV staple food for 60 years, and made him an informal spokesman for this sport. He died at the age of 95.

His son Edward confirmed his death.

The winner button of the Emmy Awards taught the triple toe cycle to several generations of TV audiences, the subtle difference between Lutzes and Axels, and how the judges evaluated the performance of the skaters. However, many fans may not know that they have won the Olympic gold medalist twice. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, he made a messy leap and rotation with his dazzling SPE, including the first three -level jump in the game.

Button began as a CBS television analyst in 1960, covering the Winter Olympic Games of Squaw Valley, California. At that time, the skating and other winter activities had not attracted the imagination of the US public. CBS is allocated only 15 minutes a night to highlight the Olympic event that TV broadcast during the day.

“New York Times” TV columnist Jack Gould wrote, the main reporter of the network, Walter Cronkite, Chris SCHENKEL, and Bad Parum Bud Palmer “pays great attention to the sea of ​​winter sports.” But he added that when he was “squeezed in some useful words”, he and his figure skating commentator Andrea Lawrence gave “a certain weightlifting”.

With ABC’s right to get Innsbruck Games in 1964, the buttons will soon contribute more contributions because the report of the Winter Olympic Games flourish.

As an analyst in various ice skating competitions and all three major networks-full of enthusiasm for excellent performances, but he did not stop the sound of dissatisfaction.

When Christopher Bowman won men’s singles in the 1992 US championship, Barton said his performance was “ordinary, boring, slow, conservative and calm.” After that, he said that he didn’t want to be a miscellaneous matter, but hoped that his criticism would inspire Bowman.

Barton told the Times in 2006: “I am very sensitive, and it may not be interesting to hear these criticisms, but I also know that this is a movement that is no longer an apple and a maternal sex. They are earning a lot of funds. And take it away from others. “

He told NPR in 2010: “I think no one is willing to sit there and listen to others and say:” Oh, oh, oh oh, isn’t that beautiful? That’s not so cute. “

Before he was known for his live observation, the buttons ruled the figure skating world with his sports ability.

He became the first American to win the Olympic skating gold, and was the first skaters to perform a double axis in the game. At the age of 18, he captured at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games in Santo Moritz, Switzerland. Men’s singles. He won the gold medal again at Oslo’s 1952 Olympic Games. At that time, he executed the first competitive three -level long jump, which was three laps. He also conceived the flying camel rotation, the free legs extended backwards, and his knees were fixed at the hip level.

He seven consecutive American men’s champions (1946-52) and five consecutive world champions (1948-52). He is the only American to win the European singles championship. He won the American Outstanding Amateur Athlete Sullivan in 1949. This is the first winter athlete to win this honor.

Richard Totten Button was born on July 18, 1929 in Englewood, New Jersey. His father George was the chairman of Button Industries. Button Industries was a diverse family. Companies of commercial interests. Dick received his first slipping among the 11 -year -old boy. His father quickly sent him to the skating school in Lake Pleiside, New York. Gustave Lussi counseled that he will guide his year in the process of his entire competition.

After the men’s European singles won in 1948, Button won the women’s championship for the second consecutive year for the second consecutive year. outside.

In St. Moritz, the teenager button completed the double axis when skating, which shocked the skating world.

The Associated Press reported: “He made five leaps and rotations, no other skaters tried it, and made everything look easy.” “Sometimes he seemed to be hung in the air. In other cases, he rotated quickly, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated, and he quickly rotated. It’s just blurred “”

The buttons also attracted the attention of his short jacket, which was in sharp contrast to the sunlight background of the snow -capped Swiss Mountains visible to the outdoor Olympic skating rink. “Oh my God, this is why Selbul,” Barton recalled. “Here, I look like a waiter, or as some people say in the dressing requirements of naval officers.”

He won the second Olympic gold medal, and he won a third -level jump from the senior students of Harvard University. Before obtaining a legal degree in 1956, he continued to go to Harvard Law Institute and became a professional professionals, and joined ice cream and holidays. He did not practice the law, but he was booming as a businessman-TV skating show.

ROONE Arledge, as the president of ABC Sports, turned the sports broadcast on television into a golden -time attraction. He recalled that he was fascinated by Button’s art works under pressure in 1959.

Arledge was Arledge, who worked on Channel 4 of NBC at the time, and was produced and directed on the scene programs at the Rockefeller Center, including the annual lighting of the annual huge Christmas tree and button skating performance. Although the audio source of Button music is broadcast in the air, the public address system of the ice rink has appeared, so the button must skate without hearing any sound.

“He kept silent, hearing music on his head, and perfectly gliding and rotating,” Archi remembered in his memoir “Roone” (2003) that he was published one year after his death. “The skating athletes and prelude to complete the synchronization are impeccable. Those who witnessed it will only marvel at the incredible Sangfroid and talents of this excellent performer. A few years later, when ABC needs one like him to get it like him, When the characters who fully understood the characters were as cool as the character commentator, I knew it exactly who to call. “

In 1962, one year after Arledge conceived “ABC’s Sports World”, Button began to analyze the major ice skating activities of the plan for a long time. He won an outstanding sports figure on TV in 1981.

The extensive TV report of the Winter Olympics played an important role in the prevailing skating as a popular audience movement, and the buttons are the forefront of comment.

He was amazed by the artistic nature of this sport and supplemented its sports ability. “This is a form of drama,” he once told the Times. “The skaters always have one foot in this sport, and the other is in the drama company.”

For his own role, Barton loves the life of performers. He appeared in the rejuvenation of the Hallmark Hall of Fame “Hans Brinker or Silver Skates” in 1958 and the revival of “South Pacific” and “Roberts Mister” in central New York.

He survived in a fearful plot. In July 1978, he suffered a serious head injury. At that time, he was a group of young men with baseball bats who randomly attacked in the Central Park of New York. On December 31, 2000, when he fell on skating on the skating rink near the home in Weichuzt County, New York, he fractured and injured a major brain. Since then, he rarely entertains.

Button’s last Winter Olympic Broadcasting operation was the second time to provide NBC reports at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

In addition to his son, he also survived by his daughter Emily Button, from marriage to skating coach Slavka Kohout, the latter ended with divorce. Ms. Kohout died last March last year.

According to the most outstanding analyst or “narrative” of the figure skating, his opinion was very clear when he would rather play his role.

As for the increasingly gorgeous clothing wearing the skaters, “Sometimes, I feel a wind tunnel in the clothing department of the opera house,” he said when he covered the Vancouver Games.

But he is still the performer. He was asked to comment in the so -called kiss and kiss area in Vancouver, where the skisting was waiting for their scores, and he told the Times: “This is TV, dear, come, come. This is the TV’s reason.”

Ash wu Contribution report.