HAPPY BOLERO DAY!
Forty years after winning Gold at the Winter Olympics with their incredible 1984 Valentine’s Day performance, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean return to the scene of their greatest triumph to announce their retirement from ice skating with a final tour
MILLIONS of people the world over will have woken up this morning and turned to a loved one to proclaim HappyValentine’s Day! Not Torvill and Dean. It’s true that, come February 14 for the last 39 years, whether apart and with their respective families or working together, Jayne and Chris have made a point of being in touch.
But their billets doux have been rather different.
Forty years ago to the day, the most famous ice-skating partnership in the world won Gold at the Zetra Olympic Hall in Sarajevo. They became the highest-scoring figure skaters ever for a single performance, receiving near-perfect scores for their breath-taking routine, set to the soaring strains of Ravel’s Bolero.
As they took to the ice at the 1984Winter Games, they did not skate for the first 20 seconds of their routine – in order to comply with Olympic rules – before they burst into life. With intense passion and intensity, the finale saw the duo collapse on the ice and lie motionless in each other’s arms, sparking a standing ovation inside the arena and scores of 6.0 from the 12 judges.
Which is why, every Valentine’s Day ever since, Jayne and Chris always say to one another: “Happy Bolero Day!”
And this year is no different for the Nottingham duo.
However, unlike in the intervening years, Jayne will not be contacting Chris from her Sussex home and he won’t be reciprocating by phone (“the old-fashioned way,” says Jayne) from West Yorkshire.
That’s because, this time round, Torvill and Dean, 66 and 65 respectively, are back at the scene of their triumph in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the 1984 winter Olympics was held.
Forty years on from their feted Valentine’s Day performance, they have returned to celebrate “Bolero Day” and announce their retirement from ice skating with one final dazzling UK tour next year.
The reason for the nostalgic trip is twofold: following an invitation from the city’s Mayor to mark the historic anniversary of an event watched by more than
24 million TV viewers,
Jayne and Chris are also using the opportunity to announce one last hurrah.
Half a century after they formed their unsurpassed partnership, Torvill & Dean:
Our Last Dance tour will kick off at the OVO Arena in Wembley in April next year and criss-cross the UK and Northern Ireland.
LOOKING back now, what stays pinsharp in their minds about that fateful day in 1984? “It was six o’clock in the morning,” says Chris, “and we were the only people practising on the rink. We danced our full routine, as we always did.
“When we finished, there was a sudden ripple of applause from around the arena, way up in the gods. Unbeknown to us, the cleaners had downed tools to watch.”
Says Jayne: “And that was a special moment which gave a hint of what was to come. So, when we came to do it in front of the judges, dancing it the best we’d ever done, there was a roar as the arena erupted and we knew we’d done it.”
Did they ever imagine it would go as well as it did? “To be honest,” says Jayne, “we’d trained and practised so hard that, even on a bad day, we knew we were pretty good.”
What was particularly gratifying, they say now, is that they alone had dreamt up the winning routine.
“We used to practise to the full 18-minute version of the Bolero as a warm-up in training. Someone – Chris says it’s him, I say it’s me! – suddenly came up with the idea of condensing it into four minutes.”
Chris continues: “You can never be 100 per cent sure it will go as planned, though. Ice is so unforgiving; anything can happen.
“Your blade can hit a rough bit of ice or there may be a stray sequin on the surface and then everything can turn topsy-turvy, quite literally. It was the most intense four minutes of our lives and the most important. It changed everything.”
Is it too much of an exaggeration to say that winning Gold meant that life was never to be the same again?
“Absolutely not,” says Chris. “The world opened up for us.” But they missed out on some of the subsequent euphoria, says Jayne, because they were quickly on a plane to Germany for theWorld Championships.
It’s only when the pair return to Zetra, the vast hall where they triumphed – now a gymnasium and concert hall – that the mood changes slightly.
“I remembered the moment all the sixes came,” says Chris, “and I knew we’d done it.
We weren’t the last pair to dance but I couldn’t see how anyone could overtake us at that point.”
Standing on the very spot where they began their routine, the ice long gone, sends a sort of chill through them. “It was here that our life changed forever,” says Jayne.
Now they’re 40 years older, how are they shaping up ahead of their final tour? They both dive for a small table and touch wood.
“Not that we’re superstitious,” laughs Chris. But he admits they’re conscious of looking after themselves more.
“That means not over-indulging, being aware of taking regular exercise.”
He has a gym at the bottom of his garden and, most days, will go through an hour-anda-half programme of his own devising, involving cardio and weights.
For her part, Jayne doesn’t like working out at home.
“There are too many distractions so I work out with a personal trainer maybe three times a week. I like working with a partner. And, in the summer, I play quite a lot of tennis,” she says.
Neither of them is a heavy drinker and they’re sensible about what they eat.
“I haven’t eaten red meat for a long time,” says Jayne. “I stick to fish and chicken, maybe some pasta. I don’t like lots of puddings.”
So, what do they want to achieve and encompass in the 2025 tour? “It feels to me like a celebration,” says Chris, and Jayne agrees. “We do feel a certain amount of pride that we can still go out there and do what we do.
“There’ll be a bit of anxiety involved, but that’s only because we’ll be taking it seriously.”
They’ll begin rehearsing in earnest when next year’s Dancing On Ice has completed.
“But we’re certainly not retiring from that,” says Jayne. “We want to keep doing it for as long as they want us.”
Says Chris: “We regard it as our baby. We developed it with ITV from the get-go because the BBC wanted it, too.”
More recently, they’ve had to adjust to Stephen Mulhern joining Holly Willoughby as the programme’s new co-host. “He’s such a nice guy,” says Jayne, “a natural, with a real affinity for people.”
A clue, please, as to what we can expect to see on the farewell tour. “I’m pretty certain there’ll be a Mack and Mabel routine and something that evokes Barnum,” says Chris. “And plenty of new stuff, too,” adds Jayne. What about Bolero?
“How could we not?” adds Chris. “We’d be lynched if we left it out.”
Reflecting on coming to the decision to draw things to a close, Chris adds: “I think there comes a time when you know. We’re not spring chickens any more.We’re still able to do it to a certain degree that we feel good about, but that will go.
“So I think this is the right time for us to be able to do that and go and skate and do some of the old routines, be very nostalgic, but then do some new fun, upbeat dances with friends of ours from the skating world and from Dancing On Ice. ”
FOR today, though, they’re savouring being back at the scene of their greatest triumph. The sadness is that the original ice rink was bombed during the war in that region. Now, a new one has been built and it’s here that Jayne and Chris put a clutch of primary school kids through their first tentative paces on blades.
“It was lovely,” says Jayne, “because it takes you right back almost 60 years to when we started out.” Each has two adult children of their own.
Jayne married US sound engineer Phil Christensen in 1990 and they have two adopted children, Kieran, 21, and Jessica, 17. By his second wife – US ice skater Jill Trenary – Chris has two sons, Jack, 25, and Sam, 23. (For a dozen years now, he’s lived with former British skater Karen Barber.)
Did either put any pressure on their children to follow their parents on to the rink?
“My two had a go but we don’t live near an ice rink so they’d only put on blades if they were on tour with me,” says Jayne.
Chris adds: “Their mother was a world champion so you might have expected them to have inherited something from the gene pool. But there was no interest.”
It made the following compliment all the more touching.
“I said to Sam that Jayne and I were coming to Sarajevo to celebrate the 40th anniversary of our win and he suddenly said: ‘I’m proud of you, Dad.’ I don’t mind admitting it brought a lump to my throat.”
“We last came back 10 years ago,” says Jayne, “and you do get a tingle when you go back to the site of where it all happened.”
A tear or two maybe? “No, but the memories came flooding back.”
Can they imagine ever being overcome with emotion?
“I have a feeling,” says Chris, “that, when we finish the tour in Glasgow on May 11, we’ll shed a tear then. Because that truly will mark the moment we’ve hung up our skates for good.”
Ask them for a favourite moment in the last 40 years and they don’t hesitate.
Right here in Sarajevo in February 1984.
●●Their 28-date tour, Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance, will travel across the UK from April 12 to May 11, 2025, with tickets on sale from today via TorvillandDean.com
‘When we finish the tour we’ll shed a tear... that truly will mark the moment we’ve hung up our skates’