Richard Button

Richard Button
Full name	Richard Totten "Dick" button
nation	United States
birthday	18th July 1929 (age 91)
place of birth	Englewood, USA
Career
discipline	Single run
society	SC of Boston
Trainer	Gustave Lussi
End of career	1952
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 5 × 1 × 0 × EM medals 1 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold St. Moritz 1948 Men's gold Oslo 1952 Men's  World figure skating championships silver Stockholm 1947 Men's gold Davos 1948 Men's gold Paris 1949 Men's gold London 1950 Men's gold Milan 1951 Men's gold Paris 1952 Men's  European figure skating championships gold Prague 1948 Men's

Richard Totten "Dick" Button (born July 18, 1929 in Englewood , New Jersey ) is a former American figure skater who started in a single run . He is the Olympic champion from 1948 and 1952 , the world champion from 1948 to 1952 and the European champion from 1948 .

Career

Richard Button grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. At the age of 12 he began to exercise seriously. His father sent him to New York to take lessons with ice dance coach Joe Carroll . He recommended him to Gustave Lussi , who would coach Button for the rest of his career.

At the age of 16, Button became American senior champion in 1946 after becoming junior champion a year earlier. This earned him qualification for the 1947 World Cup . There he promptly won the silver medal behind the Swiss Hans Gerschwiler . It was the last time that he did worse than first place in a competition. At this world championship he met Ulrich Salchow , who was disappointed that Button hadn't won and therefore gave him his first international cup, which he had won in 1901. After the 1972 Olympics , Button passed this trophy on to John Misha Petkevich for the same reasons .

At the European Championships in 1948 there was another meeting with Hans Gerschwiler. This time Button won. Since from now on no more non-Europeans were admitted to the European championships , Button remained the only American who could ever win a European figure skating championship.

Also at the Olympic Games in 1948 Button and Gerschwiler faced each other. Button dared to include a double Axel in his program, having faced it for the first time in training the day before the competition. He also managed to stand the double axel in the competition, making him the first figure skater to do so in a competition. Button defeated Gerschwiler, becoming the first American to become an Olympic figure skating champion. To this day, he is the youngest male Olympic champion in figure skating. Button was also able to win the subsequent World Cup , where he met Gerschwiler for the last time.

In February 1948 Button, his mother and his trainer were in Prague for a show . After the communists seized power, they had to be taken out of the country by the US Army.

Button planned to study at Yale University in the fall of 1947 , but postponed it for a year due to the Olympic Games. He was initially assured that he could pursue figure skating while studying as long as his grades were good enough, but was later told that he would have to give up figure skating if he enrolled at Yale. He then applied to Harvard University in Boston and was accepted there. In addition to his studies, he was able to continue figure skating here, which he did until 1952, when he graduated from university. Button trained at the Skating Club of Boston and commuted between Boston and Lake Placid .

Button won every competition he entered from now on. In 1949 and 1950 he won the world championship title ahead of the Hungarian Ede Király . As the reigning champion and the first figure skater to jump a double axel and perform the "Camel Spin", Button came under pressure from now on because he was expected to make a new jump or a new element every season. In 1949 he showed a combination with two double Rittbergers, in 1950 a combination with three double Rittbergers, in 1951 a combination with a double Axel and a double Rittberger and another with two double Axel jumps. For the 1952 season he worked with Gustave Lussi on a triple jump. They trained for a three-time Rittberger who Button was in training for the first time in December 1951 and later at a show in Vienna. At the Olympic Games in 1952 , he successfully landed the triple Rittberger, making him the first figure skater to have a triple jump in a competition. Button defended his Olympic title and then became world champion for the fifth time in a row, as in the previous year before his compatriot James Grogan .

With five world championship titles, Richard Button is still the most successful US-American at world championships and overall third best figure skater behind Ulrich Salchow and Karl Schäfer . He is also the only American with two Olympic victories. Only the Swede Gillis Grafström won one more title at the Olympic Games . At the national level, Button holds the record with his seven titles in a row from 1946 to 1952 together with Roger Turner , who achieved the same in the period from 1928 to 1934.

Since 1962 he worked as a figure skating commentator at ABC Sports. By analyzing the figure skating competitions at the Olympic Games in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Button enjoyed great popularity. In 1981 he won the Emmy .

In 1976, the year it was founded, Button was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame .

Button married figure skating coach Slavka Kohout in 1975 and they divorced in 1983. He has two children, Edward and Emily.

On July 5, 1978, Button suffered a serious head injury when he was one of the victims of a gang that beat passers-by in Central Park , armed with baseball bats.

On December 31, 2000, Button suffered a fractured skull when he fell on a public ice rink in New York State. He recovered from it.

As recently as 2010, he commented on the figure skating competitions at the Olympic Games for NBC .

Results

Competition / year	1944	1945	1946	1947	1948	1949	1950	1951	1952
winter Olympics					1.				1.
World championships				2.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.
European championships					1.
American championships	1. N.	1. J.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

• N = novice; J = junior

Web links

• Richard Button in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Photo of Richard Button with Peggy Fleming, 2008