The 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo saw one of the greatest performances ever in the world of Ice Dancing.
They captured the hearts and minds of millions of people round the world, it is estimated that over 100 m turned in to what their performance in the finals of the Olympic Ice Dance competition.
To my mind there are three elements that make their performance so special, the artist side, the technical side and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean themselves.
An after school trip to the local ice rink captivated Torvill aged 8 years old. Six years later in 1971 she became British National Pairs Champion.
Dean was a late started taking up skating at 10 years of age. six years later he became British Junior Dance Champion in 1974.
By 1975 but were partnerless and they were brought together by coach Janet Sawbridge at the Nottingham Ice Rink, England.
Together they won consecutive British National Championship titles from 1977 onwards. In the World Championships they steadily improved, 1978 11th, 1979 8th, 1980 4th and in 1981 became World Championship for the 1st time.
Their first Olympic outing in 1980 saw them come 5th.
So to the 1984 Olympics. They decided to perform to Ravel’s Boléro.
The original composition of this piece of music is over 17 minutes long. The Olympic limit for a performance is 4 minutes (plus or minus 10 seconds). They managed to condense the music down to 4 minutes and 28 seconds, still 18 seconds over the limit.
However realizing that official timing only started when a skater’s blade touched the ice. The first 18 seconds of their performance consisted of kneeling and moving on the ice without putting their blades down.
For their performance they received a clean sweep of 6.0s for artistic impression from all nine judges – a first ever. Of the 18 marks given for the piece, twelve were 6.0s and six were 5.9s.
From the UK perspective, they became national sporting icons. The country was just coming out of an economic depression, people wanted some joy in their lives and their were these two working class skaters – defying the odds and taking on the world and beating them.
In the UK 24 million people tuned in to watch their winning performance approximately 43% of the population tuned in to watch them. It ranks at the 5th more watched sport event in the UK, and excluding football / soccer and the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, it is the most watched event.
For their comeback in Lillehammer in 1994, an almost identical number of viewers tuned in again, making Torvill and Dean the only sports stars to twice command nearly half the UK’s TV sets for a single performance.
Deserving of so many 6.0s. What do you think?