Torvill says secret to friendship with Dean is they 'never got married'

RTÉ News​

16-07-2025

Jayne Torvill has said the secret to her lasting friendship with ice skating partner Christopher Dean is that the pair "never got married".
The duo, who took home the Olympic gold at the 1984 Winter Games, announced their retirement from skating together in 2024.
The pair ended their farewell tour Torvill and Dean: Our Last Dance, last week with four final performances in their home town of Nottingham to mark the end of where it all began.
Speaking about when they first became skate partners and how they have maintained their lasting friendship, Torvill, 67, told BBC Breakfast:"It was all just very new for both of us. As we skated together a few more times, I think we both realised that we both had a passion for it, and we both wanted to get better. Keep doing it, practice, get better. And I think that's what kept us going all these years.
"I always say that we never got married, so that's why we are still best of friends and still love working together."
Dean, 66, added: "Never leave the ice with an argument though.
"We've grown up through all those stages of life, from 15-year-olds to 20-year-olds to 30-year-olds to marriages to children, retirement now.
"We've done so much over the 50 years and seen so much together over the 50 years."
The pair announced their retirement from skating together 40 years after securing the 1984 Olympic gold in Sarajevo with their ice dance to Ravel's Bolero at the Zetra Olympic Hall.
Embarking on the UK leg of their farewell tour in April, they skated to Bolero for one final time – with Dean describing the audience as "phenomenal", adding that they were able to "bow out on a high".
Despite it marking the end of the pair performing together, they both said they have other projects in the pipeline and will still meet up and keep in touch.
Dean said: "We'll meet up in London and go and watch a show at least once a month, something like that.
"We like mentoring. We'll work with other people. I still really enjoy choreographing, so I hope to work with other skaters, and certainly other shows, other skating shows."
Torvill added: "We've got other work things coming up, but not performing on the ice together.
"We are quite often invited to give talks at events and so on. And normally we wouldn't have had time for that, but we'll have more time to do stuff like that."
Alongside their Olympic Gold, Torvill and Dean also saw success at the World, European and British Championships and in 1994 won bronze in the Winter Games at Lillehammer in Norway.
After retiring from competitive skating, the pair began touring, coaching and choreographing before becoming the faces of celebrity competition show Dancing On Ice, which ran from 2006 until 2014.
When the show was revived in 2018, they became head judges until earlier this year when ITV announced it would be rested.
Their farewell tour of London, Belfast, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow included a team of professional figure skaters, some of whom have featured on Dancing On Ice.