“We felt strongly about what we were doing,” Dean says 40 years later. “It was just other people who felt it was a gamble.”
“We always needed our ideas to be one step ahead creatively,” adds Torvill. “It made sense because we were trying to tell a story.”
But 1984 was a time when stories competed to crush each other.
During the Cold War, nerves were frayed by American and Soviet warheads swarming in silos amid misinformation and dangerously realistic military exercises.
There were also conflicts within the family.
A few weeks after Torvill and Dean arrived in Sarajevo, a miners' strike began, beginning a year-long conflict that divided families, communities, and their home county.
Even on the links, there was no escaping politics. A split ran through the ice.
There were also traditionalists who believed in honoring ice dancing's ballroom roots. They prioritized a combination of courtesy and control: calm precision, efficiency, and politeness in the skater's movements.
But a new wave was coming. A slower, more dramatic and romantic style emerged that excited audiences, even if it made the traditional judges uncomfortable.
The two approaches were different. And in sports that are scored subjectively, medals are determined by numbers scored by judges, which can be vulnerable if they differ too much.
Initially, Torvill and Dean leaned toward a conservative approach.
They were heading into the Olympics having completed a hat trick of winning world titles. There was little to prove, but too much to risk.
As far as they knew, this would be their last shot on the biggest stage. They were supposed to be on the pro circuit, and the rules at the time barred them from competing in future Olympics.
A musical 1930's Razzmatazz Showtunes from 42nd Street was planned. It will showcase their skills and satisfy both judges who prefer classic routines and those who prefer something more colorful.
But will it satisfy Torvill and Dean themselves?
At a dinner party in West London, I scoured a cassette tape looking for the song and theme, and ultimately decided it wasn't.
An even bolder crescendo to their Olympic career was needed.
In the basement of the hosts' one-story house, pleated silk costumes were dyed purple. An arranger was hired to cut his 15 minutes of music into two-thirds while preserving its sparkling heart. Torvill and Dean then retreated to Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps to try something new in seclusion.
“It's very hard to keep things secret these days, thanks to camera phones and social media, but no one really knew what we were doing,” Dean says. Masu. “We had confidence in what we were doing instead of listening to the arguments that we should do something safer, which is not appropriate for an Olympic year.”
“We wanted to do something that had never been done before and something that had never been seen before,” adds Torvill.
Indeed, a piece like Bolero had never been created before. There's probably nothing like it since then.
