ROMANTIC CONFESSION
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s surprising revelation
They weren’t together on Valentine’s Day this year, but Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, everyone’s favourite couple-who-aren’t-acouple, made a point of calling each other to mark the day, as they do every year.
Isn’t it a bit odd, though, to observe Valentine’s Day, considering how they’re always at pains to stress that they’re not romantically involved?
Actually, no. For it was on February 14, 1984 that they made history by winning Olympic gold in Sarajevo in the ice dancing with their now iconic Bolero routine. Who needs Valentine’s Day when you can toast Bolero Day?
“If we aren’t together, we always call each other and say, ‘Happy Bolero Day,’” admits Jayne. Alas, there isn’t a card for the occasion.
“But maybe there should be,” laughs Chris.
Now, 20 years since they retired from professional skating, they think it’s quite fitting that their great Bolero triumph took place on a day already synonymous with romance, flowers and dreams coming true.
“It was Valentine’s Day.
It was the Olympics. It was Bolero,” says Chris. “It was the culmination of everything we’d worked for. All the stars were aligned.”
What’s odd, when they watch the footage, however, is how subdued they were as that unprecedented row of 6.0s flashed up on the scoreboards.
“I find it really funny now,” admits Jayne. “If I was doing it today, I’d be jumping up and down and punching the air, like the kids do now. But in those days, you were conditioned not to react like that. There was no hugging each other at the end of your performance or punching the air. You’d get up and curtsey, and then maybe smile.”
“We were old school,” agrees Chris.
Of course, they weren’t at all. Back in the day, they were considered revolutionaries, so much so that the rules of their sport changed immediately after Bolero.
As their fans will know, Ravel’s Bolero was at first deemed too long for their routine because it exceeded the time allowed. They got round the rules by kneeling on the ice for the opening bars.
“They changed the rules after that so the action started when the body moved, not when the blade went to the ice,” recalls Jayne.
“And lying on the ice, as we did, isn’t allowed any more either,” adds Chris. So their Bolero routine was effectively rendered unrepeatable in a competitive setting.
Not that the public has ever stopped clamouring to see it. When Torvill and Dean embraced the glittery new chapters of their career, first with their own ice-dance shows which they performed around the world until 1998; then, having been enticed out of retirement in 2006, on TV at the helm of the UK hit entertainment show Dancing on Ice, Bolero came too – viewers expected to see them perform it.
When Dancing on Ice – a sort of ice-dancing Strictly featuring celebrities partnered with professional skaters competing in the rink – went off the air four years ago, it was thought that the couple had hung up their Bolero boots for good. But the show made a triumphant return in the UK this year, with Torvill and Dean on the judging panel. The launch episode pulled in 8.6 million viewers and was such a success that, within three weeks, a new series was commissioned for 2019. They’re also performing during the Dancing on Ice Tour that also
features celebrities from the series, including TV presenter Donna Air. The pair won’t reveal whether they’ll choose Bolero for either the grand final or the tour. But they do admit that being back on the ice together after four years is more demanding than they expected.
“I mean, I’m nearly ready for my bus pass,” says Chris, talking about his arthritic knees.
It is rather shocking to discover that he is 59, while Jayne is 60.
“We were nervous when we skated together the other day because it was the first time in four years,” admits Chris.
“It was two days of hell. We left at quite a high level and some of those skills have lost their edge, so you have to work to get them back.”
What of the chemistry? Is it still there? “Yes, but it will evolve,” says Chris. “At the moment, we are focusing on getting the skating right, then we move into performance mode.”
In the flesh, they still look like professional athletes. “I go to the gym more when I’m not skating,” tells Jayne. “You
realise the benefits of keeping the muscle groups in shape.”
And they laugh about how she can’t afford to bulk up – Chris’ knees can’t take any extra pounds.
“He’ll start grunting, oh yeah, he definitely notices,” she says.
How much do they skate when they aren’t performing? Chris, whose home is in the US, says he’s on the ice most days, choreographing for the new crop of top skaters. “I live five minutes, if that, from a rink.”
But UK-based Jayne, who lives in East Sussex, says, “I don’t skate unless I’m preparing for something. I don’t live near a rink. I’m two hours from one.”
What? “Did you think my house would be next door to one?” she laughs. “No. Sometimes I’ll take the kids, but just for fun.”
Her children, Kieran (15) and Jessica (11), who she adopted with her husband, sound engineer Phil Christensen, can skate, she says, but aren’t serious about it.
Chris’ teenage sons – from his second marriage, to US figure skater Jill Trenary – are older (Jack is 19, while Sam is 17), and don’t skate at all.
“I’ve never put pressure on them,” he says. “I feel very strongly that it has to come from them. The thing about us is we were never pushed.
It all came from ourselves.”
There’s a lot of talk of “the kids” today in a more general sense. They seem in awe of how much the sport has changed these days. “The jumps are more impressive, it’s faster,” explains Chris.
Quite how cut-throat the skating world can be has been underlined by the film I, Tonya, which revisits the time when the husband and bodyguard of US skater Tonya Harding conspired to injure Nancy Kerrigan, a fellow Olympic hopeful. Two men were hired to hit her knee with an iron bar. Torvill and Dean were at the 1994 Olympics when the scandal was at its height.
Chris says, “People were fascinated by this white swan/black swan idea, one representing purity and the other the dark side.”
They may not yet have had Hollywood scriptwriters asking to write their story, but no skating couple since has managed to achieve their iconic status.
Watching them in the flesh is an eye-opener. Rarely do you see a pair so physically in sync. Even while eating lunch, they’re tactile. She frequently touches his arm or leg and during our photoshoot, they fall effortlessly into each other’s arms. It’s hilarious to learn it wasn’t always so.
“We must have been 15 when we were paired up,” tells Chris who, like Jayne, is from Nottingham. “I remember the coach asking us to get in hold but to get closer.
“She kept saying, ‘More contact.’ We were sticking our bums out rather than in.”
Jayne rolls her eyes. “It was mortifying,” she laughs.
That intimacy was quickly learned, though. Many couldn’t understand how they weren’t a proper couple, given the passion they conveyed. It’s only recently they revealed there was once a frisson – a bit of “dabbling” as Chris put it when they were interviewed by Piers Morgan in 2013.
Jayne rolls her eyes again. “Of all the words to use!” she says. “I knew the minute he said it that all our achievements, the Olympics, everything, would be forgotten and all the press coverage would be about that. I was right.”
Today they both insist it was just a meaningless kiss. “I don’t think it was anything. We were 15,” tells Chris.
But surely the fact this romance wasn’t pursued meant that it was a deliberate choice not to go down that road?
“Very much so,” he says. “We had seen so many partnerships end because relationships got in the way. We knew if we wanted to do it properly, we had to eat, sleep and breathe the sport, with no complications.”
Today they struggle to describe their relationship.
Chris tries. “It’s like a marriage in some ways. It’s a friendship, a partnership, a trust. We’re best friends. We talk all the time.”
They’ve now been skating together for 43 years. At 17, they were travelling internationally without coaches or entourages.
Off the ice, their lives have gone in different directions.
Chris has married twice – he split from his first wife, skater Isabelle Duchesnay, in 1993, the year before he and Jayne returned to the Olympics, winning a bronze at Lillehammer. His marriage to Jill ended in 2010, when he became involved with ice dancer Karen Barber, his current partner. Jayne too met her husband on one of their skating tours. “He used to be part of the sound team.”
Chris’ partner Karen was a judge on Dancing on Ice, except in 2011 and 2012, when she was head coach. Now Chris and Jayne have taken her place on the panel. Has that caused conflict at home?
“Not that I know of,” says Chris. “Karen understood where they were coming from when they wanted a reset…”
Jayne again finishes his sentence. “She is very supportive of the show.”
How involved have they been in each other’s private lives? When Chris’ marriages were in trouble, for instance, did he share that with Jayne?
“Yes, Jayne was completely supportive,” he says.
She nods and looks at him.
“If he wants to have a rant or moan, I will be there to listen.”
He continues, “We are honest with each other. We know each other and there is that trust.”
“Knowing me, knowing you,” says Jayne, and for a moment they seem to be about to break into the ABBA song, so they both laugh. “But that’s the reason we’re still working together. Being married to each other would have complicated that. When you have domestic responsibilities, children, a business to run. I mean, I’m sure husbands and wives do all that, and maybe it works for them. For us, this is the way.”
‘ It’s like a marriage in some ways. It’s a friendship, a partnership, a trust’