Torvill and Dean
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are former British, European, Olympic and World champions. At the 1984 Winter Olympics they became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time. They are the only British pair to have won three gold medals in a single Winter Olympics (1980, 1984, and 1992). They were also the first English pair to win two gold medals at one Winter Olympics event, in 1980 and 1992.
About Torvill and Dean in brief
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are former British, European, Olympic and World champions. At the 1984 Winter Olympics they became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time. The pair retired from competitive skating for good in 1998 when they toured one last time with their own show, Ice Adventures, before rejoining Stars on Ice for one more season. Their career was portrayed in the 2018 biopic Torvill & Dean. Both are from Nottingham, England, where the local National Ice Centre is accessed through a public area known as Bolero Square, in honour of the pair’s Olympic achievements. There is also a housing estate in the Wollaton area of the city with a street named ‘Torvill Drive’ and another named ‘Dean Close’ which is located just off Torvill Drive, with many of the surrounding roads named after coaches and dances associated with the pair. In a UK poll conducted by Channel 4 in 2002, the British public voted Tor Vill and Dean’s historic gold-medal-winning performance as Number 8 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments. The couple moved to Hamar, Norway, in 1993 to practise at the Hamar Olympic Amphatre which hosted the figure skating events at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Their final routine was performed to Paul Simon’s \”Still Crazy After All These Years\”, a routine they had devised a few years earlier for competition. Their free dance was designed to re-establish some ideas about ice dancing which they had been instrumental in dismantling. According to the judges, they danced the routine at the European Championships with no indication of any problems from the judges.
The routine did have one move, an assisted lift, which they did not have in the joint European Championships, though they had danced it before at the World Championships. They never took lower than first place in any competition they entered except the 1994 Olympic Games in Lhammer, Norway. They were the first British ice dancers to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, and the first to do so in four consecutive Winter Olympics appearances. They are the only British pair to have won three gold medals in a single Winter Olympics (1980, 1984, and 1992). They were also the first English pair to win two gold medals at one Winter Olympics event, in Lake Placid, in 1980 and 1992. In 1984, they turned professional following the 1984 World Championships, regaining amateur status briefly ten years later in 1994 to compete in the Olympics once again. Singer-actor Michael Crawford was the fourth member of the team, along with their trainer. He became a mentor to them around 1981, and went on to help them create their 1983 and 1984 Olympic routines, and \”taught them how to act\”. Crawford said of them, ‘I found them to be delightful young people, the kind you want to help if you can’. He was present with their Trainer at the ringside, when the team won their perfect Olympics score with their Boléro routine. Although they had left their jobs as an insurance book clerk and policeman, respectively—thanks to grants from the City of Nottingham—they were not allowed to earn any money from skating as long as they wished to remain eligible for the Olympics.
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