British ice skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have announced they will be retiring from skating together in 2025.
This news comes as the pair celebrate the 40th anniversary of their Olympic gold success.
The duo from Nottingham went down in British sporting history when they skated at the 1984 Winter Games to Ravel’s Bolero at the Zetra Olympic Hall in Sarajevo.
Torvill and Dean have returned to Sarajevo to celebrate the day with the city 40 years on from their Valentine’s Day performance.
Torvill and Dean to do one last tour in 2025
Torvill and Dean confirmed they will embark on one last UK tour next year.
The duo will now retire from dancing together after their upcoming tour, Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance, which will run from April 12 to May 11, 2025.
Reflecting on how their golden moment inspired more appreciation of ice skating, Dean told the PA news agency: “That was really a launching pad of then going off to do other things.
“Touring around the world, skating in front of hundreds of thousands of people and then Dancing On Ice starting up because of winning the Olympics.”
Torvill and Dean’s performance at the Olympics followed a sustained period of success at the World, European and British Championships during the early part of the 80s.
Watch Torvill and Dean's Bolero performance at the 1984 Winter Games
As they took to ice at the 1984 Winter Games, they didn’t skate for the first 20 seconds of their routine, in order to comply with Olympic rules, before they burst into life.
The finale saw plenty of passion and intensity and saw the athletes collapse on the ice and lay motionless in each other’s arms, sparking a standing ovation inside the arena.
They were awarded perfect scores of 6.0 from the 12 judges.
Recalling the day, Torvill, 66, revealed they had not had many opportunities to practise the routine in the arena before the final.
However, they were given a 6am slot on the day which no other competitors in their training group turned up for due to the performance being that evening.
A memory from the day which has stuck with them is the “ripple of applause all around the gods of the building” they heard from the cleaners after they performed the routine, Dean, 65, said.
He recalled: “When you think about the whole day, nobody was there, and then as the day goes on, people start to fill the building and the competition happens and it gets to a climax and the gold medals are awarded.
“Then the people start to disappear and then you’re just left with how it was in the morning, we’re almost closing the door on the day.”
Recommended reading:
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- Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean to retire from skating but how old are they?
Torvill and Dean celebrated Olympic success with Princess Royal and Champagne
He also revealed that the Princess Royal waited for them in the Olympic Village with Champagne to celebrate despite them not arriving until late after being held up by the Olympic doping checks after the performance.
Torvill and Dean turned professional after their Bolero performance but competed in the 1994 Winter Olympics where they won bronze before retiring from competition.
They later branched out into touring, coaching and choreographing before becoming the faces of ITV’s Dancing On Ice, which ran from 2006 until 2014, and later becoming head judges on the show when it was revived in 2018.
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