Olympic Skating Legend Dick Button Useless at 95

Dick Button, America’s first Olympic gold medalist in determine skating, is lifeless, 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 … based on his kids, who first confirmed his demise within the Washington Publish.

Maybe nobody in historical past’s had extra of an impression 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 protecting the game all over the world.

Dick virtually actually put America on the determine skating map — at a time when European nations dominated — when he gained his first of 5 consecutive world determine skating titles in 1948. That was additionally the yr he gained 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 individual to land a triple leap, a triple loop to be precise, on his technique to the medal stand.

After that Dick went professional … scoring an enormous (for the time) $150,000 contract with the Ice Capades. Won’t sound like a lot now, but it surely 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 “Wide World of Sports” … 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 together.” His remaining stint protecting the Olympics got here in 2010 throughout 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 gifted younger skaters who have been on American Airways 5342, which crashed Wednesday night time into the Potomac River after colliding with a army helicopter. Fourteen folks 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 kids. He was 95.