FIRE ON THE ICE

Fifty years ago, two talented teenagers - Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean - formed a partnership which revolutionised ice dancing. Now they're preparing to hang up their skates - but not before a trip Down Under to share a final blaze of glory.

- WORDS by TIFFANY DUNK

It was an early Thursday morning in 1975 when Christopher Dean and Jayne Torvill had their first, incredibly awkward dance. The 15-year-olds had seen each other around at Nottingham ice rink, enough to say hello to, but nothing more than that. But Chris was in the market for a new partner, his usual skating compatriot having decamped to London. Jayne was another talented local who coach Janet Sawbridge had identified as a potential good fit.

Janet met the teenagers on the ice at 6am and instructed them to take a dance hold. And then, to their horror, she pushed their hips together to make them closer and, says Jayne, “kind of left us there for five minutes or so. We kept looking all the way around the room rather than at each other and talking. And then she came back, and we carried on with the lesson.”

“It was a bit of a test, I think, to see if we could get through it,” Christopher adds with a laugh. The pair are chatting to The Weekly 50 years later, ahead of their final Australian tour, which will cap off their history-making career.

“A judge who we highly respected [later] said to us, ‘it’s all about eye contact, about looking into each other’s eyes as you’re skating to give that emotion and belief that it’s genuine. That the two of you are committed and engaged in what you are doing.’ That permeated into our skating. We took that on board and we realised the power of connecting.”

Luckily, they say, their bond came fairly easily after that first uncomfortable moment. Having first put on skates at the age of nine, Jayne was working by day as an insurance clerk. Christopher, who was in training for the police force, had started at a similar age, after receiving a pair of skates for Christmas.

“For the first two weeks I walked around the house in them before I even got on the ice,” he recalls. In all other available hours they were putting in the hard yards at the rink.