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US skating great Dick Button dies aged 95 / Photo: © AFP
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US skating great Dick Button dies aged 95
US figure skating great Dick Button, a two-time Olympic champion whose technical prowess revolutionised the sport has died aged 95, US Figure Skating announced.
Button's death coincided with the Washington DC plane crash in which 14 people from the figure skating community, including two former world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov and young stars from the Skating Club of Boston, died.
Button had skated for the Boston club and remained close to it throughout his life. The trophy room at the club is named in his honour.
"Richard 'Dick' Button, whose pioneering style and award-winning television commentary revolutionised the sport of figure skating, died January 30 in North Salem, New York. He was 95 years old," US Figure Skating said in a statement.
Born in Englewood, New Jersey on July 18, 1929, Button won back-to-back Olympic titles at the 1948 St. Moritz and 1952 Oslo Winter Games and five consecutive world titles, three North American titles and seven national titles.
He also won gold at the 1948 European Championships, a time when the competition was open to North Americans.
But beyond his exceptional record, Button is also credited for taking the sport to another level, excelling in compulsory figures and in free programmes which he peppered with his technical prowess.
At the first post-World War II Winter Games in Oslo, the teenage Button became the first man to successfully complete the double axel, on his way to becoming the first American Olympic figure skating champion.
At Oslo, four years later, on his way to his second gold medal, he completed the first triple jump in competitive history, the loop. He also invented the 'Button camel', now known as the flying camel spin.
He had to wait until the Pyeongchang Games in 2018 to see another skater, Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu, retain his Olympic title.
Button's only career defeat was at the 1947 world championships, where he took silver behind Switzerland's Hans Gerschwiler.
After retiring in 1952 he studied at Harvard Law School and also toured extensively with Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice shows.
He went on to work as a lawyer, actor, organiser of professional skating competitions, commentator and television producer, and was known as "the voice of skating" in the United States between 1960 and 2010.
G.Collins--SFF
