‘We’re best friends’: Skating couple Torvill and Dean reflect on their legendary partnership

It’s been 40 years since Torvill and Dean skated into superstar status with a perfect score at the 1984 Olympics. Now, the iconic duo is preparing for one last victory lap.

Ice skating icons and fairytale couple Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are happily hitched.

To other people.

“Whenever people ask, ‘How come your relationship is so strong?’ we’ll say, ‘Well, we never got married,’” Torvill says laughing.

“We’re best friends,” Dean adds. “We talk to each other almost every day. It’s a bond that’s unique having spent 50 years working together and performing. Jayne is my best friend.”

Torvill and Dean skated to global fame 40 years ago when they performed Bolero at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, winning gold, and earning perfect scores across the board.

“With each glide and turn, they conveyed a story of passion and intensity that captivated the audience and judges alike,” experts gushed at the time. “Flawless execution, coupled with profound emotional connection.”

That routine made them superstars.

Their connection as ice skating partners also fuelled the fairytale, and hopes, Torvill and Dean might be a real-life couple.

Many assumed Torvill and Dean were a real-life couple. Picture: Supplied

“Everybody saw us together and, to be honest, we were together the whole time,” Dean says. “We lived and breathed skating, and everything revolved around our career.

“The public, like they’d see Fred (Astaire) and Ginger (Rogers) on the screen, assumed we were together.”

Dean, now 65, says he and Torvill, 66, were obviously “doing something right” because the “emotional” routines “convinced” people they were watching a romantic duo “in reality”. “We were acting and performing,” Dean says. “That’s the sign of good performers.”

Torvill is married to Phil Christensen, an American sound engineer. They have two children. Dean’s partner is British dancer Karen Barber. They also have two children.

After Sarajevo, and several world championship wins, Torvill and Dean turned professional and toured the world with their own shows, Ice Adventures, Stars on Ice, Fire and Ice, and Face the Music.

They competed at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, and placed third.

Torvill and Dean retired from the sport four years later, but have remained in the spotlight as reality show judges on British television.

In 2025, Torvill and Dean will do a farewell lap of the world with a swan song called Our Last Dance. They will visit Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

“It will be our last live touring performance ever,” Dean says. “It’s 50 years since we started skating together, and we’ve done so much in our career. We’ve completed the circle and it’s time to call it a day. We want to have one last performance for ourselves and anybody that’s followed our career.”

The pair achieved perfect scores for their routine in the 1984 Winter Olympics. Picture: Supplied

Torvill says it’s hard to fathom how five decades of dancing on ice has passed so quickly.

Torvill and Dean were 15 and 14, respectively, when a coach paired them to size up their potential as a duo.

“We were very shy with each other,” Torvill says. “But what we had, even from the early days, was we both loved skating, we both had a passion for it.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen from this partnership. We didn’t dare to wonder. Even the coach who put us together said: ‘Do you think it’s going to work? Will you stay together as partners?’ We’d be, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

“She kept saying that,” Torvill added, “and we kept deferring it, the whole time.”

Dean says, “It feels like yesterday. We’ve done so much, and yet your memory will just jolt you back to those early days when we started skating together as kids in Nottingham.”

Dean started training to be a policeman at age 16, two years after he was paired with Torvill. He stayed in the force until he was 22.

“That was going to be my career, then skating came along,” Dean says. “My boss at the time said, ‘You should pursue your skating because you can always come back and be a policeman’.”

In 1980, Torvill and Dean quit their jobs – he, a copper; she, an insurance clerk – to focus on ice skating glory.

That year, they placed fifth at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and won the world championships in 1981.

Their routine ‘Bolero’ in the 1984 Winter Olympics.

“Once you’re at the top, you’ve got to stay at the top,” Dean says. “That motivated us to be original and creative; ‘What’s the next thing we’re going to do?’”

To that end, Torvill and Dean started training in secret. “It was before cell phones and social media,” he says. “We’d hide away in Germany and perfect our routines.”

Their performances, he says, became “an unveiling … like an opening night.” The famous routines included a Broadway tribute, Mack and Mabel, and the circus-themed Barnum. However, Bolero, based around the Maurice Ravel composition, changed everything.

“Because we were world champions, we felt we could take the lead creatively,” Torvill says. “We looked at what we hadn’t done before, and we hadn’t really used a classical music piece.

“We used to use Bolero in its entirety to warm up because it’s 16 minutes long. We’d play it as a gentle piece of music, warm up, do our basic skating and get on with the work.”

Famously, and controversially, the music for Torvill and Dean’s version of Bolero ran for four minutes and 28 seconds, which is 18 seconds longer than Olympic regulations.

“In the rules, you can only go as far as four minutes and 10 seconds,” Torvill says. “The first 18 seconds of our routine began on our knees, and the stopwatch doesn’t start until the blade hits the ice, so we kinda got away with that.”

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean perform their routine at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

At the time, many commentators said Torvill and Dean’s Bolero routine was a massive risk and gamble. “It was a routine that bent the rules and challenged convention – a free dance number that could burn up like chiffon to a spark,” the BBC reported. “Torvill and Dean could easily have played it safe. Instead they played with fire.”

Dean smiles.

“Once we’d taken on the concept of, ‘This is a piece of music that will feel original and different within our world,’ there was no going back,” he says. “Was it a gamble? From our point of view, not so much. A lot of other people were concerned because at the time, it was radical.

“The beauty of it was, it had this progression and intensity that built and built … to a crescendo and climactic end.”

Torvill agrees.

“We were convinced,” she says, “and eventually, we convinced everyone else.”

Torvill and Dean perform Our Last Dance at Brisbane Entertainment Centre, June 14 and 15; Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, June 18 and 19; Sydney Qudos Bank Arena, June 21 and 22; RAC Arena, Perth, June 27. Tickets: Ticketek

Originally published as ‘We’re best friends’: Skating couple Torvill and Dean reflect on their legendary partnership