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Sports|Dick Button, Figure Skating Champion and Commentator, Dies at 95
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/sports/dick-button-dead.html
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He won an Emmy for his enthusiastic and sometimes acerbic analysis on sportscasts, but before that he made history as a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Jan. 30, 2025Updated 10:08 p.m. ET
Dick Button, whose passionate and often tart commentary on figure skating competitions became a television staple over six decades and made him the sport’s unofficial spokesman, died on Thursday in North Salem, N.Y. He was 95.
His death was confirmed by his son, Edward.
An Emmy winner, Button taught generations of TV audiences the nuances of triple toe loops, lutzes and axels and how judges assess a skater’s performance. But many fans may not have known that he was a two-time Olympic gold medalist himself, advancing modern figure skating in the late 1940s and early ’50s with his dazzling leaps and spins, including the first triple jump in competition.
Button began working as a TV analyst in 1960 with CBS, covering the Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, Calif., at a time when figure skating and other winter events had yet to capture the American public’s imagination. CBS allocated only 15 minutes nightly to highlight the Olympic events it telecast during the day.
The network’s chief reporters for the Olympics, Walter Cronkite, Chris Schenkel and Bud Palmer, were “very much at sea where winter sports are concerned,” wrote Jack Gould, a television columnist for The New York Times. But he added that Button and his fellow figure skating commentator, Andrea Lawrence, gave the coverage “a decided lift” when “allowed to squeeze in a few helpful words.”
Button was soon contributing a lot more, as Winter Olympic coverage blossomed when ABC obtained the rights to the Innsbruck Games in 1964.
Working as an analyst at a variety of skating competitions — and for all three major networks — Button waxed enthusiastically about brilliant performances, but he didn’t hold back from voicing displeasure.
