'It's an honour to play the young Torvill and Dean'
Two skating cousins have achieved the highest honour of their careers, by taking on the roles of two legends in their sport.Isla Forsyth, 12 and Lewis Macdonald, 13, from Ayrshire, have been playing a young Torvill and Dean in the Olympic champions' farewell tour.The 50th anniversary Our Last Dance Tour will bring to an end the sporting careers of the most iconic skaters of all time.The young cousins will perform in front of thousands in Glasgow this weekend, bringing more glory to their family's skating legacy.
Isla and Lewis are coached by their mums - sisters Suzanne Otterson-MacDonald and Gillian Forsyth.Suzanne represented Team GB at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Gillian was a British champion in her own skating days.Suzanne told BBC Scotland News: "It's a massive honour for them to get this opportunity and be with these icons on tour."They had heard of them, but it was more my era of skating so I was able to tell them about them."They are on quite early in the show playing the young Chris [Dean] and Jayne [Torvill] and getting together at first after being single skaters."Both cousins are advance novice skaters and both have British championship titles under their belts as well as international medals.They train six days a week but they are both individual figure skaters, not ice dancers.Like the partnership they play in the show, they had to be brought together for the ice dancing magic to happen.Lewis said: "We've not skated together before – we are figure skaters so we had to train the basics on how to skate together and then come to rehearsals to learn what we are going to do in the show."We were asked by the company to do it because they knew we were quite close and loved skating and knew we were cousins."I think everyone is quite gobsmacked that we are able to do this and it is such an honour to do it."
Isla, who has been skating for almost as long as she has been walking, said she had thought being asked to take part in the tour was a prank."I was coming back from a skating comp in Bucharest," she said. "I was in an airport. My mum phoned me and said 'Isla you won't guess what's happened'."She said she thought it was a prank."The youngsters were excited to meet Torvill and Dean, admitting they were starstruck.And the feeling is mutual.Christopher Dean told BBC Scotland News: "We put out the search and they were perfect for the spot. They carry it off really well."They were great, very impressive. For them performing in front of the huge audiences it was a big experience for them."
Jayne Torvill added: "We hope they will learn a lot from this experience and grow and develop as skaters. Who knows, in 50 years they might be doing something similar."Torvill and Dean became household names after their gold medal-winning performance of Bolero in 1984 at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.They became the highest-scoring figure skaters of all time for a single programme. when judges gave them a dozen perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s, which included artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge.The farewell tour Our Last Dance is a retelling of their with personal moments of narration.
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