By Erik Pedersen. 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 He then went to the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he won his first gold medal β propelled by landing the first double axel in any competition.
He repeated at the Games in Oslo, this time hitting the first triple jump in competition. 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 Five years later, the entire American figure skating team was killed in a plane crash while en route to the world championships.
He also won the inaugural Sports Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality in and was nominated again in He was loaned to NBC to work on the Turin Olympics and finished his ABC broadcasting career in , when the network stopped covering figure skating. Button had launched his Candid Productions in , 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.
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 He also played an announcer in a episode of Beverly Hills, Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy. Deadline is a part of Penske Media Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
