Torvill and Dean
Torvill and Dean on the Dancing on Ice tour in Manchester, 2012 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country | Great Britain | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Retired | 1984, 1994 (amateur), 1998 (professional) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Torvill and Dean (Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean) are British ice dancers and former British, European, Olympic, and World champions.
At the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics the pair won gold and became the highest-scoring figure skaters of all time for a single programme, receiving twelve perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s which included artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge, after skating to Maurice Ravel's Boléro. One of the most-watched television events ever in the United Kingdom, their 1984 Olympics performance was watched by a British television audience of more than 24 million people. The couple went on to record an even higher score at the 1984 World Championships, thirteen 6.0s and five 5.9s.
The pair turned professional following the 1984 World Championships, regaining amateur status briefly ten years later in 1994 to compete in the Olympics once again. The pair retired from competitive skating for good in 1998 when they toured one last time with their own show, Ice Adventures, before rejoining Stars on Ice for one more season. Their final routine was performed to Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years", a routine they had devised a few years earlier for competition. Although remaining close friends, the pair did not skate together again until they were enticed out of retirement to take part in ITV's Dancing on Ice. Their career was portrayed in the 2018 biographical film Torvill & Dean.
Both are from Nottingham, England, where the National Ice Centre is accessed through a public area known as Bolero Square, in honour of the pair's Olympic achievements. In July 2025, the NIC also renamed the rink to the 'Torvill & Dean Rink'. There is also a housing estate in the Wollaton area of the city with streets named 'Torvill Drive' and 'Dean Close', with many of the surrounding roads named after coaches and dances associated with the pair. In a UK poll conducted by Channel 4 in 2002, the British public voted Torvill and Dean's winning performance at the 1984 Winter Olympics as Number 8 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.