As an entrepreneur and broadcaster, Dick Button promoted skating and its athletes, transforming a niche sport into the showpiece of every Winter Olympics
Button, winner of two Olympic gold medals and five consecutive world championships, died Thursday, said his son, Edward, who did not provide a cause. He was 95.As an entrepreneur and broadcaster, Button promoted skating and its athletes, transforming a niche sport into the showpiece of every Winter Olympics.
That began his dominance of international skating, and U.S. amateur sports. He was the first figure skater to win the prestigious Sullivan Award in 1949 — no other figure skater won it until Michelle Kwan in 2001.In 1952, while a Harvard student, he won a second gold at the Oslo Games, making more history with the first triple jump in competition. Soon after, he won a fifth world title, then gave up his eligibility as an amateur.
“Dick Button is the custodian of the history of figure skating and its quintessential voice,” 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano said in Button’s autobiography. “He made the words ‘lutz’ and ‘salchow’ part of our everyday vocabulary.” A collision between a commercial flight and a military helicopter left 67 people dead, including members of the New England skating community.
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