Torvill and Dean exclusive: 'Bolero' was our 1966 moment - now we want to groom next generation of talent

It remains, 38 years on, the most elegant and hypnotic performance ever conjured in the name of British sport. The 4½-minute rhapsody on ice choreographed to Ravel’s Bolero was so note-perfect that when Jayne Torvill and Chrisopher Dean conducted their final run-through on the morning of Valentine’s Day, 1984, even the cleaning staff inside Sarajevo’s Zetra ice rink downed tools to applaud.

At home, a national obsession had coalesced around the pair, one an ex-insurance clerk and the other a Nottingham police constable, to the point where, come 9.52pm, 24 million people gathered in their living rooms in anticipation of an Olympic masterpiece. “In everybody’s head it was a foregone conclusion, except for ours,” Dean reflects. “It created a public persona. Everybody bought into the idea of two people working together in the pursuit of excellence. Bolero became a piece of music so identifiable and original in the same breath that the nation was waiting for it. Everyone tuned in. There are moments of which you ask, ‘Where were you when it happened?’ The 1966 World Cup, John Lennon, Elvis Presley. Somehow, it worked its way into the British psyche. And that’s where I think it has stayed.”

His view is hardly hyperbolic: even today, the memories of one freezing night in the former Yugoslavia are seared on the collective consciousness, from the silk purple costumes inspired by Dean’s love of irises to the intimacy of the couple’s near-kiss mid-repertoire. The latest anniversary of their gold-medal display, marked by an unprecedented 12 perfect sixes, brings with it a beautiful symmetry. For this February 14, Torvill and Dean will be consumed less with nostalgia than with their restless urge to see whether Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, the most exciting couple to grace British ice dance in decades, can win the country’s first Olympic figure skating medal since their retirement in 1994.

This marks a rare opportunity to interview the four of them together: two immortals and two prodigiously talented proteges desperate to rekindle the flame. While neither Fear nor Gibson were alive at the time Torvill and Dean glided into history with their star-crossed lovers’ routine, both are acutely conscious of the standard to which they must aspire. “It’s very serendipitous, the fact it’s the same date,” says Fear, the Connecticut-born 22-year-old who has gone through 58 edits of their free dance for Beijing. “It’s still one of the most breathtaking performances I’ve ever seen.”

While Fear has skated almost as long as she has been able to stand, Gibson, five years her senior, has arrived at this auspicious juncture via a less orthodox route. As a boy growing up in Prestwick, on the Ayrshire coast, his sporting ambitions were squarely focused on football – until, that is, he was introduced to the maiden series of Dancing on Ice, fronted by Torvill and Dean. “When Jayne and Chris appeared on the TV, I didn’t know who they were, but my mum was ready to talk about what everybody witnessed in ’84, and how much of a moment it was,” he says.

“Ever since, I have studied videos and documentaries about them. What is so clear is the absolute attention to detail that Jayne and Chris had, how much they were pushing the limit every single time. It’s something that has inspired us immensely. The rules are insane now, in terms of what you cannot do. Trying to come up with something different every season is a huge challenge. But it’s one we love. We have that in common as couples.”

It would be futile for any pair of this generation to seek to imitate Torvill and Dean’s interpretation of Bolero. Even in its own time, it was a programme of breathtaking audacity, as the two skaters constructed the most melodramatic narrative they could around Ravel’s steady crescendo. “In their minds they are thinking about two young people who are unable to marry and who therefore decide to end their lives,” intoned BBC commentator Alan Weeks, as they took to the ice. “They are climbing a volcano, ready to throw themselves into the inferno.”

“It was made obvious to us that to stay at the top, we had to continue to be creative,” Torvill explains. “You can’t come back and do the same thing the next year with different music. For us, it was great. We always loved the creative side. We pushed it a little bit in ’84, just to see what would happen, and it worked. We were just within the rules.”

Modern-day methods of choreography tend to be a touch more clinical. Dean cannot help but smile as Gibson describes how he and Fear painstakingly re-edit medleys of Kiss songs so that the music sounds fresh even to those familiar with the originals. “It’s lovely what you can do with technology now,” he says. “We needed to have an orchestra when we did ours.”

Dean is quick to acknowledge, though, the exceptional difficulties that confront their successors in the quest for global recognition. “We want them to popularise themselves, to be known, to get out there. But it’s hard now, because when we were growing up, there were only three channels and five newspapers. Now there’s social media – it’s so vast. There’s a lot of noise, and to get above the noise is hard.”

Even though Torvill and Dean’s identities had merged into one all-conquering phenomenon by 1984, courtesy of three successive world titles, they were able to prepare in Bavaria in relative serenity, eventually arriving in Sarajevo aboard the German team train. “We were quite shocked that, just before the Olympics, two journalists suddenly turned up at our training centre. Normally we were in peace, in the zone. For Lilah and Lewis, there are so many more distractions.”

So far, Fear and Gibson are navigating the maelstrom with admirable poise, surging from outside the world’s top 20 to finish seventh at last year’s world championships. While the depth of Russian, American and Canadian opposition leaves them only an outside chance of a Beijing medal – Milan-Cortina in 2026 is, they suggest, a more realistic bet – China’s zero-Covid extremes are creating a level of stress unheard-of for their predecessors. Already, Russia’s Mikhail Kolyada has been ruled out of the men’s free skate after a positive test, his quadrennial shot at glory snuffed out through no fault of his own.

“We’ve been strict the entire pandemic,” says Fear, forced to follow draconian isolation regimes for the best part of two years. “I have to say, I can’t imagine the pressure of needing that negative test,” admits Dean, while Torvill asks, incredulously: “And you train in masks?” “Yeah,” Fear grins, with a certain fatalism. “When we get to breathe, it’s great.”

Born into a passionate skating family, she is desperate to deliver an immaculate dance. It is no coincidence that she has immersed herself in the life stories of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Canada’s triple Olympic champions. “They are true masters of what they do and always strive for more mastery,” says Fear. But if it is flawlessness she craves, she and Gibson would be well-advised to emulate the example of Torvill and Dean, who at their peak would approach every competition with an uncompromising intensity.

“In ’84, we were the big fish,” Dean recalls. “We used to train through injuries and sickness and period pains, all of that. You had to do it, because those four minutes on February 14, they would make the difference. When it comes to defining your life, it’s huge. But the mental side of it is not to place it like that. It may sound robotic, but it’s being able to replicate, day in, day out, what you have done. That’s the mentality. If you think about the enormity of it, you want to run away. But we never did.”

“You need to train when you’re not feeling well, because you need to know how it would feel if it really happened on the day,” Torvill agrees. “If you’re having a rough day and it’s not a great performance by your standards, it can still be good enough.”

In their eyes, Fear and Gibson exemplify the requisite work ethic. But the pool of talent in British figure skating is hardly inexhaustible, despite the lasting popularity of Dancing on Ice. In Beijing, and possibly beyond, the young ice dance sensations face shouldering the burden of national expectation by themselves. “I don’t want to be controversial or to bring British skating down,” Dean says, “but when you look at the Russian ladies or the Chinese pairs, you realise that it’s a national sport in those countries, and it’s definitely not the same here. That’s why the beacon for the future is these two.”

It is a daunting billing, but one that Fear and Gibson appear willing to accept, insisting that Bolero provides them with “daily inspiration”. They are assiduously crafting their Beijing free dance around the music of The Lion King, in the hope it will have the same popular resonance. “We both grew up absolutely loving that story and all the themes it represents,” Fear says. “It’s universal. It’s a way to connect with people through memories.”

So much, ultimately, depends on the emotion with which they are able to invest their skating. What distinguished Torvill and Dean was their capacity to convince the audience of their connection, to the point where many wondered if there was a genuine romance. “Are you going to get married?” one reporter asked. “Not yet,” Dean replied, deliberately protecting the mystique. The result was that during Bolero, characterised by sustained eye contact between the pair, people were seduced into believing that the love affair was more than just theatrical. It was, as Princess Anne put it, a “brilliant idea, brilliantly executed”.

“That piece of music engendered the emotion,” Dean argues. “It was something that started very small and grew. It was just the right choice for us at the time.” Did they believe it would be garlanded with sixes across the board? “Even after 20 years, we would watch it back with a critical eye,” he says, modestly. “But after 38, we’re a little less critical now.”

In an illustration of sport coming full circle, Torvill and Dean will be commentating for the BBC on Valentine’s Day, trusting that Fear and Gibson can produce an encore worthy of the majesty of Bolero. Their informal mentoring is a gift that their students appear anxious to reciprocate. “Thank you for all your guidance,” Fear tells them. “I hope you know how much it means for us to have you in our lives.” In any other relationship, this might sound like obligatory deference to those who have gone before. But such is the presence of Torvill and Dean, as towering in 2022 as on their night of nights in ’84, you can sense that she means every word.