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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Skating Coverage Right On The Button

Jack Craig Boston Globe

Talking to Dick Button about figure skating was a reminder of a high school French teacher who banned English in class. You were woefully unprepared.

How do skaters in the ‘90s compare to those in your era (the ‘50s)? was the first question, a softie. “Skating changes in spurts and flourishes,” Button replied, impatiently. The concept of continually stronger, faster, better athletes does not apply to figure skating, he implied.

“There aren’t spinners today to compare with Nicole Hasler,” he said. Hasler? It didn’t help that it was necessary to ask when she competed (1952) and, worse, how to spell her name.

“And none of the present skaters are as fast as Ronnie Robertson,” Button said. A little research revealed Robertson was the 1956 Olympic silver medalist, four years after Button won his second gold medal.

Button does not live in the past, but he does not forget it. “There has been a revolution in jumping, and it has improved,” he said. “But you don’t have to see five or six triple jumps … It is not who gets over the line first in figure skating, it’s the way you skated.”

He is best known now, he confesses, as a TV analyst instead of the skating legend who introduced the triple jump. Button is in Providence, R.I., this week for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that were on ESPN2 Wednesday and ESPN Thursday night and again tonight, with two more appearances on ABC Saturday afternoon for the men’s final and again in the evening for the women’s final. Over four days, Button’s sharp eyes and tongue will decipher some 100 skaters. Pity a few of them.

Button is unique in televised sports. No one else speaks from such knowledge and in which his listeners know so little. Add a natural decisiveness and you have an announcer with reigning authority.

He disputes that notion, of course. “The quest is to define good skating,” he said, trying to simplify the mysteriousness of the competition. But he did allow audiences at home occasionally are at a disadvantage. “TV sometimes distorts,” he said.

Except for the 1972 Winter Games covered by NBC, Button was the figure skating analyst on ABC for six Winter Olympics through 1988, a period when the discipline expanded to easily become the No. 1 attraction of the entire Olympic competition.

His final Olympic commentary was in Calgary in 1988, when ABC brought the up-close-and-personal concept to a new height for the contest between Katarina Witt and Debbi Thomas. Button’s analysis of the victorious skater from East Germany (then a communist nation) over the endearing American was unflinching.

During the last two Winter Olympics, Scott Hamilton, another former gold medal skater, assumed Button’s role for CBS. Hamilton is cheerful, almost bubbly. When a skater would fall, it was as if Hamilton’s knee also was scraped. Button maintains more distance, and because his praise was more limited, it carried more punch. And by means impossible to define, Button’s comments managed to raise the dramatic stakes even higher.

Button is not drawn easily into the intense spotlight cast on figure skating a year ago by Tonya Harding. “It brought notoriety, and I suppose the more you look (at skating on TV) the more you will watch,” he said.

He also was succinct on the controversial award of the gold medal to Oksana Baiul over Nancy Kerrigan. “I would not have voted that way,” he said. This was consistent with his reaction a year ago, 24 hours after the two skated. Button said then that after watching Kerrigan’s performance and then seeing Baiul make an early misstep, he concluded Kerrigan had clinched the gold.

He was wrong, and when told this week that, despite all the stories, it remains difficult to comprehend the international politics of skating judges, Button responded, “You are naive.”