As they put the finishing touches to a farewell tour that will bring to an end the longest partnership in British sporting history, there is only one question to ask Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean: now they are hanging up their skates having spent almost every waking moment in the last 50 years together on the ice, what on earth are they going to do with their time?
“Beekeeping,” says Dean, as the two of them sit in the green room of Aberdeen’s P&J arena where they have been rehearsing their spectacular goodbye bonanza for the past month.
“Beekeeping?” says Torvill, sounding incredulous. “You’ve never been near a bee.”
“I have no bees,” admits Dean. “But in my head it sounds like a nice thing to do. And that’s my point. Basically I now will have the time to do anything I fancy.”
It will be some change, putting on a beekeeper’s mask instead of a pair of skates. So adapted have they become to life on the ice over the years that Torvill says when she is out and about away from the rink, she is now physically incapable of walking in anything other than the flattest of shoes.
“I hate wearing heels,” she says. “I’m forever falling off them.”
Yet here they are, willingly stepping away from what has long been their domain.
“We always said we knew when it would be over,” says Dean. “And we both realised this was it. It doesn’t get easier, you know, the pains, the aches.”
Not that anyone watching them in rehearsal would suggest there is any apparent physical decline. On the ice the pair still glide with the smooth accomplishment we have always associated with them.
When they ease their way through the Bolero routine that made their name, in truth it may not be quite as athletic as it was in Sarajevo 41 years ago (at 66 Dean is no longer as adept at doing the splits, for instance). But the pair are still mesmerising in their co-ordination. For four minutes, the show’s supporting cast of 16 professional skaters, many of them former Olympians, stand at the side of the rink watching on in awe, before bursting into a spontaneous round of applause as the two collapse to the ice at the routine’s conclusion.
And no wonder. Four decades on, Bolero remains the stand-out moment in competitive ice dancing history, its grace and beauty undimmed. To watch the two of them once more undertake it, is to be immersed in a warm bath of nostalgia. Back in 1984, 24 million of us Britons tuned in to see them reach technical perfection. Their artistry and precision delivered the ice-skating equivalent of Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10, or Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile, or Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick – a sporting moment carved into the collective memory. This was something extraordinary. Not that they realised what they had done at the time.
“We had no idea of the reaction,” says Dean. “Straight away we went back to Germany, where we were training, because we wanted to do the Worlds six weeks later. We wanted to win the clean sweep: Europeans, Olympics, Worlds. It was only after we won the Worlds we came back to Nottingham and the city had organised a street parade, like we’d won the FA Cup or something.”
“We were a little embarrassed,” adds Torvill. “We thought no one would turn out. But the streets were lined. And when we got to the main square in Nottingham, it was completely full. They held a reception for us in the Council House and we came out on to the balcony and waved to the crowd below. That’s when it hit us what we’d done. Thinking about it, we were behaving like the Queen.”
For two working-class kids from Nottingham’s estates (Dean’s father was a miner, Torvill’s worked in the Raleigh bicycle factory) it was a triumph that changed everything. They had been together since they were young teenagers.
“It was 1975, a Thursday morning, 6am we first skated together,” recalls Dean.
They had been paired by circumstance.
“My partner had left to find a better partner in London and Jayne’s partner had done the same,” says Dean. “It left the two of us. We’d already put five or six years in, really loving what we were doing. We didn’t want to stop. Getting together afforded us the opportunity to carry on.”
Which means there are two skaters out there who must have spent the last 50 years bitterly regretting their choices.
“At first we didn’t want it to be common knowledge we were skating together,” adds Torvill. “To avoid gossip.”
Initially at school, they carried on when they left education, supporting themselves by working full time, Dean in the police force, Torvill in an office. Then came a life-changing moment. They got a grant from Nottingham Council, which enabled them to train full time.
“We’d come fifth in the Olympics and a couple of pairs who’d finished above us had retired, so we thought we might be in with a chance of bronze if we went for it.”
Backed by the untold riches of £7,000 a year each, they found they had a similar work ethic, both prepared to be on the ice every possible moment. Plus, they discovered they had a real flair for choreography.
“We were always encouraged to do our own,” says Torvill. “Even our first coach Janet, she was always: ‘Have you found your music yet?’ Some coaches still give the kids the music and the steps, giving them no room to be creative. Our coaches were more on the technical side and less on the artistic side.”
In 1984, by now training in Bavaria, they decided to go against all convention and put together a piece soundtracked by classical music. And they thought Ravel’s overture had real potential for drama.
“The usual thing was to have music with some sort of dance rhythm,” says Torvill. “With Bolero we wanted to do something different. We tried to keep it under wraps until the British Championships.”
“I remember at the British Championships there was a bit of an intake of breath: ‘What are you doing?’” adds Dean. “But we believed in it.”
Rightly so. Looking back at their performance in Sarajevo 40 years on, it still looks remarkable, astonishing, spellbinding. Not that the two of them regard it as such.
“For a long time we didn’t dare watch it in case we saw something that wasn’t quite right,” says Torvill. “Over the years, we’ve gradually been able to watch and think what a special day it was.”
“Yeah, when we watch it now, we watch it with a smile on our face. Whereas in the past it was hard to watch: we were so critical. And you can’t change it.” Besides, Dean adds, while these days the standards are very different, they have come to appreciate that there is something about Bolero that stands the test of time.
“Listen, what they are doing technically now is amazing, way ahead of us,” he suggests. “From an emotional point of view, though, I’m not sure. What the two of us had built up over the four years of being at the top was a whole story. You watch some of the skaters now and they’re fantastic, but you don’t know about them, who they are. I think the public followed us, they watched us on the telly. By the time we got to the Olympics there was this anticipation.”
And yet, even as half the population back then headed to the nearest rink to try to emulate the couple’s golden achievement, when Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson won bronze in the recent World Championships, they were the first Britons in the four decades since Torvill and Dean to stand on an international podium. The sport’s opportunity to use their success as a springboard was manifestly squandered.
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“I know, I know,” says Dean. “Everything here was so amateur. There wasn’t a system working together to nurture talent. The coaches were individuals, in different places, doing their own thing. There wasn’t a pathway for young talent to pass them on to the next level. Even now, Lilah and Lewis skate in Montreal. There they have a system, they have the ice facilities, funding from their associations. We never found that.”
Much as they wanted their sport to thrive, after their success Torvill and Dean didn’t have the time to fight the lack of follow-up. They turned professional, toured the world, skating on and on, everywhere they performed finding they were cheered to the echo. And since 2006 they have been the presiding presence on ITV’s Dancing On Ice, which has come to an end now they have announced they will be stepping away from performing.
“We loved doing Dancing on Ice,” says Torvill. “We’d have been happy to remain as judges and not do any more routines, but they decided to put the series on hold.”
She adds they always enjoyed watching the celebrities giving vivid demonstrations of quite how hard it is to skate and dance at the same time.
“Some of them are brilliant, Ray Quinn, Kieran Bracken,” says Dean. “At first we just wanted the best skaters. But the producers wanted some who struggled, to make it more varied. They were right. We have a video sequence in our show of celebrities falling over. It is very funny.”
“Ah yes, Sir Steve,” adds Torvill, referring to the great Olympian Steve Redgrave, who fought with the surface to much comical effect in this latest series. “Bless him.”
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They loved, she adds, working with sporty folk in particular, with whom they shared a fundamental quality: a determination to win.
“I suppose that is the question about us,” says Torvill, when asked if the pair regard themselves as sports people or artists. “The answer is we’re still competitive. But with ourselves. We still want to be the best we can be on the ice.”
And it appears their competitive instincts really do seep into every aspect of their lives. After the interview, they explain they are off to take an ice bath, to ease muscles strained by hours of rehearsal. Which, it might be thought, cannot be an easy process for a pair in their sixties.
“We can do three minutes in there,” says Torvill.
“Actually I can do five,” says Dean.
“Well, if you can do five, I can do five,” says Torvill, immediately issuing a challenge.
Even as they step away from the ice, it seems the spirit of Bolero is as alive as ever.
Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance UK tour runs from April 11 – July 12. For tickets, see torvillanddean.com
