Dick Button Dies: Gold Medalist Who Became The Voice Of Olympic Figure Skating Was 95

erik pedersen

Thu, 30 Jan 2025, 9:25 pm·3-min read

Dick Button Dies: Gold Medalist Who Became The Voice Of Olympic Figure Skating Was 95

Dick Button, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion who went on the become the Emmy-winning voice of Olympic figure skating broadcasts, died Thursday. He was 95. His son Edward confirmed the news to The Associated Press but didn’t not provide a cause or place of death.

Born on July 18, 1929, in Englewood, NJ, Button was a daring and innovative skater who in 1946, at just 16, became the first post-WWII U.S. champion. He then went to the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he won his first gold medal — propelled by landing the first double axel in any competition. He was the first American to win the men’s event.

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He repeated at the 1952 Games in Oslo, this time hitting the first triple jump in competition. Button invented the one-footed flying camel spin, or “Button Spin,” which remains a staple of the sport, and also would be the first skater to land a combination of three double jumps. He remains the only skater to hold the national, North American, European, world and Olympic titles concurrently.

Button retired from amateur skating after securing his fifth consecutive world title later that year. He went on to join the professional Ice Capades and earned a law degree from Harvard in 1956.

Five years later, the entire American figure skating team was killed in a plane crash while en route to the world championships. The event was canceled, and Button persuaded legendary ABC Sports exec Roone Arledge to televise the next year’s championships on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Button joined the network’s announcing team, and another career was born.

Button became a mainstay as a commentator for ABC’s figure skating telecasts and on Wide World of Sports. He later was Emmy-nominated for an Outstanding Achievement in Sports Programming for his commentary work on the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, where American Peggy Fleming won the women’s competition. He also won the inaugural Sports Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality in 1981 and was nominated again in 2000.

With a unique perspective, he covered skating for all of ABC’s Winter Olympics through the 1980s, before other networks took over the TV rights to the Games. He was loaned to NBC to work on the 2006 Turin Olympics and finished his ABC broadcasting career in 2008, when the network stopped covering figure skating.

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Button had launched his Candid Productions in 1959, and, after he had been at ABC for more than a decade, had an idea for a new kind of TV show. Called The Superstars, it featured well-known athletes competing in a event other than their own. Former ABC Sports exec Don Ohlmeyer talked about the show in a 2004 interview for the Television Academy Foundation, noting that CBS had just stolen TV rights to the NBA and his network needed something to air on weekends.

“The first weekend we went on the air [in 1973], Superstars did like an 18 rating at 1 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and the NBA that week did like a 3.” Ohlmeyer said. “We just kicked the NBA’s tail for like three or four years.”

As president of Candid Productions, Button also created other sports competitions including Battle of the Network Stars and The World Challenge of Champions. He helped producer Broadway shows including 1987’s Sweet Sue, starring Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave, and Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase in 1989.

Button also had a handful of acting credits over the years, including playing himself in The Bad News Bear Go to Japan and voicing himself on Animaniacs in 1995. He also played an announcer in a 1992 episode of Beverly Hills, 90201.

He also authored two the books Dick Button on Skates and Instant Skating.

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