Torvill & Dean: The Truth Behind 'Bolero' Gold - 50 Years of Discipline, Four Perfect Minutes

0:02Ultimately, you know, it all comes down to four minutes of your life at an Olympics. and if you think of everything that's crammed into those 10 years of together, comes down to a very small amount at the end of it of success or failure. When you stood there at the barrier just before they announced your name, that's one of those moments of like, this is it. We knew what we had to do. That is the voice of Christopher Dean, one half of the legendary Torval and Dean. Of course, we all remember the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Well, if you're getting old like me, you definitely do. The bolero, those perfect sixes.

0:46Four minutes that changed the lives of Torval and Dean forever. But what you don't see in that dance is the decade before. Ten years of preparation for that one moment. Six hour training days, never missing a session, even when ill or injured. The creative genius of starting on the knees for 18 seconds to fit the music into the time limit. and the eye contact so intense they could talk without words. Jane and Chris have been partners for over 50 years. They met at 10, they started skating at 15 and never once negotiated with each other whether to continue or not. They just kept showing up and this episode is absolute gold for understanding how elite partnerships actually work and that magical balance between creative risk-taking and meticulous discipline.

1:29What it takes when everything comes down to just four minutes. Welcome to High Performance, Jane Torville and Christopher Dean.

1:41When we were younger, our life was just focused on the ice every day, what we were doing, being effective when we were on the ice, looking after ourselves off the ice. Because ultimately, you know, it all comes down to four minutes of your life at an Olympics. And if you think of everything that's crammed into those 10 years of together comes down to a very small amount at the end of it of success or failure and so it focuses your mind I don't know whether we thought about it in those terms I think that's as as older people thinking back to how it was then and how you um how we see it now but at the time I think it was just our life and that's what we did and that's how we did it.

2:29We didn't have a team of people around us or anything. We were our own sort of team, just the two of us really. Why have you stayed together for 50 years? Why did you skate so beautifully in 1984? How have you done a 40-year skating career? Why you two?

2:50Specious. I think from the very beginning when we first skated together, we were put together. I think we both loved skating. It's as simple as that. We just loved the feel of it. We loved working. We loved the discipline of it. And what we got out of it, you know, like when you do a new move and you get it right for the first time, it's so satisfying. It could be one step that you get right. And we just had this passion. We both had the same passion just to keep doing it. Like we get to a certain level and think, oh, we could do that a bit better, or we could try this, it will be more difficult.

3:27And I think we just kept pushing ourselves. And the fact that there's two of us, if one of us didn't feel very well one day, it's not like you're going to say, I'm not doing it today. Because you do it for the other person. Over the time, we built a mutual respect for each other. It's that if you're going, I'm going, I'm looking after you, you're looking after me. You don't let the team down. No, and it's a very small team, but that's the respect that we had for each other. But also, Jane had been a national champion before I was as a pair skater. Now, pair skaters and dancing are two different disciplines in figure skating.

4:04Pair skating, it's big high lifts. Dancing, it's all about the intricacy and how you move together as a partnership. and Jane had been a champion at the age of 13 I think you were weren't you I'm speaking for you but I'll tell the story because it'll be quicker so you were um 13 and then the partner decided he wanted to go to London and skate with someone else probably get a better partner which left Jane at the age of 15 a bit old for single skating but you wanted to carry on I had had a partner that a coach had come up from London to coach me with my partner because we were... You were junior champions?

4:47Primary champions. Oh, primary champions. Or junior. And my partner left to go to London to skate with somebody better. So it left the two had-beens. The two skaters on the scrappy. On the scrappy. It was hers. And she said, well, why don't you... Well, let's put you with Jane. And I'm like, well, she's a single skater, pair skater. Different discipline. But she had kept up a dance. And one day, the coach, we said, oh, we'll give it a go. We'll give it a go. And it was one of those six o 'clock in the mornings in Nottingham Ice Rink. And old Nottingham Ice Rink is a cold, dank, dark place. Not humid, but freezing.

5:26It wasn't auspicious at all. And the first thing she did, I'll show you. She said, stand in Dancehall. And made a stand like this. And she said, I've got to get something from my dressing room. But we were like, because we were young then, we couldn't look at each other. We were like this all the time. What do you think? And we were belly to belly and we're 15. Right, so you couldn't make eye contact. No. It was a bit awkward. Yeah, because she pushed our hips together. She said, you've got to skate close together, which wasn't wrong. But it was just like, whoo. It was a test, I think. Anyway, we stuck it out.

5:57Wow. And then after about a week, Janet said, do you think it's going to work? Do you want to stay together? and we we said um oh not sure we'll let you know but we actually did enjoy our skating together we loved it but we were afraid to say yeah we were afraid to say yes we want to be partners in case something happened and it didn't work out and we said it many times but we still haven't agreed to skate together no no every time she asked we were like no and then she stopped asking because she knew that we were playing games but yeah how nice there's something really intriguing here about what you're describing because when we're doing the research on this we were reading thinking from the lens of our listeners that most businesses fail for what they say are three reasons one is that they go bankrupt the other one is that you decide the effort isn't worth the reward but the third and most significant one is when there's difference between partners so there's a psychologist called David Gage who has gone and studied the relationship of partnerships and tried to make sense of what the great partnerships do and there's so many things that you're telling us that seem to fit with the research and I'd be interested in how formal or informal you actually went around discovering some of these yourself in practice so one of the things he talks about is that both partners have to establish a really clear role in the relationship of what your strengths are, what the other's weaknesses are.

7:29I think we did that. Yeah. I think... You were the bossy one. I was the bossy one. Well... Not really. He was... Can you see your hand up my back? Were you? No, no, but you were like... I had a vision of things to do. Yes. And you were always... Would come along. You wouldn't go, no. No, but I think in any kind of dance, the male takes the lead. That was what it was like in those days. And that's why I grew up to do that. Even when I learned to do dances with my coach, you follow the lead of the male. And so that's what I did. But then on the other side of that, when we were creating free dances, as we called it, Chris was the one with all these visions.

8:18He's the creative one. and he would say, oh yeah, let's try this. And I used to say, well yeah, you've lifted me up onto your shoulder or whatever. How are you going to put me down? Oh, I don't know yet. Well, let's figure that out. No, let's figure that out before I jump up on your shoulder upside down. Let's figure I'm going to get out. No, I think as we've grown older, we realised that that was our role, that I must probably lead forward. But Jane is always coming with me. it's never that no I'm not going to do it it's never a tug we're always wanting the same thing yeah that's a great idea but I think it'll work better if we do it this way so and listen and listen and then say no so you've just described yourself as being the visionary so how would you go about envisaging what it was you were trying to achieve do you want to talk about Bolero or is that too soon yeah okay so musically each year you come to the end of one season and the next season's almost upon you.

9:21So let's say in 1983, the year before the Olympics, we'd won with a routine called Barnum. And so we're starting over again as champions, possible future Olympic hopefuls. And so we're looking for a piece of music that we feel is unusual in the genre that we're in, figure skating. And we'd been using this piece of music for a warm-up to skate around because it's 18 minutes long if you do the full version. And so it's a nice warm-up on the ice. We stroke, we skate around, skate together. And by the time it's finished, we're ready to then move on to the serious skating side of things. And so when the music for the 1984 came up, one of us, we both claim this.

10:06I can't remember. Said, what about Bolero? And we both looked at each other. And the minute we went, that's really unusual because it starts quiet, crescendos to big, but it's one tempo all the way through. Builds the whole way through. It wasn't this fast, medium-paced, slow, back to fast. It was one, and so in that sense, it was really unique and it would be original to do on the ice. So the music's the first part of it. Now the music, there were no versions that were four minutes long because the free dance is a four-minute routine. so how do you get an 18 minute piece of Ravel down to four minutes by this time we stopped using razor blades and sticking pieces of music together and there weren't computers back that time we could do all of this editing so we we'd moved up in the Barnum period we'd found an arranger through Michael Crawford that found an arranger just to do the Barnum so we went down that route we found an arranger to do the music bob bob bob the arranger bob the arranger and and bob said you know it sounds a simple piece of music but it's really complex of how you build the structure to start in the same way and still crescendo in four minutes as opposed to 18 minutes and you've got some specific instruments to pick out and choose anyway he went down the route and He said, I think I've done it, but I can only get it down to 4 minutes, 28 seconds.

11:48Now, in the competition, the music criteria is that it should be 4 minutes, but you've got a 10 second either side, so it could be 3.50 or 4.10. We've got 3.28. So we interpreted the rules. We looked at it and it says, well, when you start to skate, we started on our knees. and Jane's blade touched the ice after 18 seconds of 4 minutes 10. So creatively, you had to sit down and think. Who came up with that idea? Start on the knees. Yeah, start on the knees. He'd seen something in a musical where a couple were on the knees and sort of doing something similar. So he said, let's try it on the ice, and that's what we did.

12:34and we had to keep it going for 18 seconds so that when my blade touched the ice, they would start the stopwatch and technically would run for four minutes, 10 seconds. And we've always liked a piece of music with, in our heads, a narrative for us. It doesn't have to be a story, but it's a story because it gives us intent of what we want to do. And so with Bolero, it was sort of a Romeo and Juliet situation. We come from different families, can't be together, but we can be together in death. So basically it was a journey in our heads up a volcano, which we then at the end launch ourselves into and live together for eternity.

13:15So we dived onto the ice at the end. This is nice because, you know, continuing with the theme of David Gage's partnership charter, one of the other defining elements is clear purpose and goals. So when you're starting out with Bolero and you think you're getting the moves together, how did you look at the olympics what was it about for you was it because let's be honest we haven't got a great track record in this country of gold medals at winter olympics right so was it just doing the best we can was it a gold medal was it placing in the top 10 or top three i think um i think because we'd um we'd won our first world championship in 1981 and we were kind of at that stage we on paper we could have got a bronze medal but we won and we were kind of like whoa a bit shocked because we knew that we wanted to continue to 84 and we had to then keep doing something different each year to stay at the top but I think with Bolero we we did we knew we had to do something different each year didn't we and what was unusual with Bolero was it was a classical piece of music and I think that in the past because it's ice dance you've always got something with a rhythm and we'd use Mac and Mabel and we'd use Barnum that had lots of big tunes in them but Bolero was something really different but as soon as we knew we were going to use that music we believed in it and I think that's part of the of the journey that you've got to believe in what you're doing because if you don't it will show in your performance.

14:44And also going into the Olympics we've been the world championships three previous years so it was our Olympics to lose. That was how it was. The expectation was high. So, you know, when you're the leaders in your field, you tend to wear this coat of like champions. And we always wanted to lead. We always wanted to be adventurous in what we were going to try and do. Valera for us, it was a real departure and it was risky in a certain way, wasn't it? Taking this classical one piece of music, one tune, no changes that's continuous like that. But it's something that we felt that was unique and different and would stand out.

15:28So you're the reigning champions and you said it was ours to lose and yet you were willing to take a big risk to win. So where was your focus? Was it on almost defending the status or was it about pushing the boundaries and doing something? I think it was, yeah. We always wanted to be different. Yeah. We always wanted to change ourselves up. And that was a period of time where we, there weren't so many competitions. And so when we did unveil a new routine, it was sort of, we kept it secret as long as we could because we would go off to Germany, a place called Oberstorf in Bavaria. And that's where we trained because we could train all day, basically there.

16:11And then when we would come back to do our first competition, which was the British, It was almost like a premiere, an unveiling for the first time. And also our competitors, they wanted to know what you were doing, didn't they? There was quite a buzz around it within the skating world. I remember we used to, in those days, there was no social media, but we had maybe four or five journalists from like the Express, the Mail, whatever, who always covered the skating. And I remember one of them, was he from the Express? Christopher Hilton. Yeah, when he heard that we were using Bolero, he's like, he said, and he was always a big fan of ours, he was always great, and he said, that's a bit boring, isn't it, Bolero?

16:54And we said, no, we don't find it boring. But I think he'd heard it. In context of just listening to the music. Just sitting and listening to the music, but when you're doing movement to it and skating, it becomes a different thing. And what we tried to put into it was the connection with each other, because right from the beginning, our eyes were this close. and we almost never lost gaze. Well, you're telling a love story, so... So you're having to be creative, push the boundaries, deal with being the number one most fancied couple for the Olympics in 1984, and deal with journalists already saying that's a bit of a boring piece of music.

17:34So I'm really interested in the role that self-doubt played in your life at this point. I think today's world is a completely different world. social media everybody's got an opinion and if you look at it and take it in you're bombarded with so many opinions we lived in our bubble and we actually didn't listen to anybody else that we we went off to germany we choreographed it we put it together and it's only after we put it together that people would then comment about it and so we were already we've decided we're committed we're fully on this train of this is what we're doing and i think when then people saw it or when the press then saw it they got it oh i see what you're doing now and and so we didn't have to you know there weren't people with camera phones recording you every session that you were doing and then posting it but there's something that precedes that around you've got to trust your own instinct that what you're doing exactly the right thing so yeah how did you learn to trust your instincts to know that doing something daring was going to end up winning you the gold medal?

18:41I think it's the confidence that we got from winning from the first time that people said, actually, you're the best. And there's something I would talk about that mantle of putting on the champion's coat. I think that gave us our confidence to then be more creative, to want to challenge going other ways, other areas, different directions. And then showing our audience and the judges, you know, this is what we can do now. This is different. No one's done this before. Why not do something? I know it's a sport, but there is also that creative side. I think, I don't want to get too lofty, but artists and writers are always looking to better themselves.

19:24And that's what we were trying to do in our sport. and also because of the nature of the music it made us do different skating moves it forced us to do different skating long long lines beautiful beautiful arms and in fact we started doing more ballet lessons didn't we we used to take ballet lessons because it was a classical piece of music when did you develop the ability to look into each other's eyes so when you demonstrated there and you said you were 15 and couldn't look at each other because it's really interesting research on this around what it's quite isn't it an area around around synchronicity that if you sit and stare into somebody's eyes the research says and just sit opposite each other for 15 minutes your heart rate your breathing and your skin starts to synchronize with the other person so that was obviously a significant moment for you both and i'm interested when did that happen um i think fairly early on because um one of our great judges and mentors was a chap called Courtney Jones and and he would say you need to have eye contact otherwise no one's going to believe you and that wasn't necessarily in every routine you've got to perform to the audience as well but years ago they used to have these things called compulsory dances which like in ballroom was a tango or waltz a foxtrot whatever and depending on that kind of dance there were moments when you're in like a waltz hold that you would be looking at each other so I think from an early stage that we learned that eye contact was important you know when when you watch tv or a movie and when an actor's talking to somebody and they're really talking into them to their face to the trying to get in their head it's real isn't it and and you and it's believable and i think that's what we tuned into of we want it to look believable but we got past that of the physical just looking but actually believing when we were looking we're almost for me sometimes and i think for jane that we're almost talking to each other when we're looking at each other as well yeah over the years because we've done as professionals many shows and performances if one of us has got a problem like i don't know your knee has gone funny see the twitch so we look at each other and you kind of do that and we know like as chris said you can talk with your eyes so yeah how hard was it to maintain professionalism in this you know we all watched strictly come dancing they talk about the curse of strictly and you work you know for a long time on dancing on ice and you see the impact that it can have when two people are very close to each other physically and then mentally so how did you tread this line to keep it platonic to keep it professional I guess we grew up with it so we didn't I mean, yeah, I think the focus was the skating it wasn't a career then it was something that we just really wanted to pursue and then once you start getting success that became the most important thing in our life so I suppose we were very driven in what we wanted to achieve but we knew that turning professional, you know, the show's got your name on it.

22:44This is after competition now. After competition. Moved on a long way now. And then you actually get paid for doing what you love to do. But if you're doing a professional show, you know, there's no messing about because you can't be silly and, I don't know, go off and get married in the middle of a season of a show or have an affair with somebody. Because like Chris said, you've got to stay focused on what you're doing because the next day you've got to be ready to do a performance. Did it ever cross the line and then you have to have a conversation and say this is... When we were younger, we were sort of for a minute.

23:19Yeah. But it didn't last very long. But it was before major competitions. You know, when you're kids, when you're teenagers, and people just go out on trips and go to competitions and then afterwards have a bit of fun. But I think still, even then, our main focus was the skating and being ready to train the next day and stuff. I think we just eventually got into that place that we knew that we were the best of friends. And that friendship has... I mean, I think that mutual friendship has got us to this point now, 50 years later. People, quite often we get asked, what's the secret of your friendship, relationship?

24:01we never got married never got married don't sleep with each other yes but you've also had to push each other to the limit right to get the success you've got and this is something that i love talking to people about because i think we underplay hard work these days and we underplay it often because everyone can work hard and so i think it makes people feel better if they don't talk about hard work right there must be another reason for your success but the truth is that without hard work you wouldn't be sitting here now you definitely wouldn't have had that gold medal and all the other things that have followed what would you like to let our listeners hear about what hard work really looks like to you for us um it's repetition waking up every day doing the same thing day in day out when it hurts when it's cold when you don't feel like it when you're sick.

24:55You know, we used to practice, if one of us was ill, colds, flu, period pains, we'd still go on and do it because that might happen on that day. And so it's getting through the adversity, knowing that you can get through it and push through. That hits the nail on the head because you've got to know mentally that you can do it. And when we trained in Germany for our competitive years we we trained six hours a day so we'd have a routine we'd get up have breakfast two hours on one section of competition lunch or a break another two hours and then two hours sort of late afternoon and that was the routine and as Chris said you know if one of us was carrying a slight injury you'd still go and train because mentally you had to know that if you woke up on the morning of the final of the Olympics and you had a cold that you could do it So there was no fear of like, oh gosh, what if I don't feel well tomorrow?

25:54There was no fear of that because you knew how it felt because we'd done it. And also going to the ice, the practice session, it's like you never miss it. You never miss a training session for whatever reason. I was reminded when I was reading your biography, a friend of mine played for Melbourne Storm in the Australian Rugby League. And one of the things that they do when they sign a new player for the first two weeks, they send you out to go and work on roofs of houses or go and work on a building site, and then you have to come and train in the evening. And they do it to reinforce a sense of privilege of being a professional athlete.

26:31And I'm wondering whether your own backstory of having to train while still maintaining a normal job in many ways reinforced that. It did, like you say, it makes you appreciate the time that you can go and train because that's the thing you want to do that's the thing you love doing but at the same time yeah when we didn't have the commitments of a job you appreciate it even more it wasn't like we it was always there you know we had to work we decided chris was a policeman so he was doing police training like a proper career not knowing what was ahead really and i just worked in an insurance company office which i hated because i don't like sitting down it's called Axan now I think.

27:14Aviva. Oh is it Aviva? I don't like sitting at a desk and writing so I don't know why I just did it because I needed to earn some money. And then in 19, is it 1980? We came fifth at the Olympics and that was the year we thought we had a chance of a bronze medal next year. And so we decided to give up our jobs and use the money that we saved. We'd saved enough money just for six months. for the next six months so that at least we could get through that next season and give ourselves because all our competitors were training full-time so um we did that but in the meantime someone told me of a grant um a fund that was in our nottingham city council that had been put aside for the 1980 olympics which the summer olympics which had been boycotted because they were in moscow yeah yeah and so there was this pot of money there and somebody said to me because we were sort of getting well known within Nottingham then as well for winning competitions and right to the city councillor, this is his name, da-da-da.

28:19And so I wrote asking, saying I'd heard about this pile of money, would it be possible to get any kind of help and assistance, a grant? I think it was called a grant. A grant, yeah. Not that pile of money. Yes. And I was just asking for the next, the season coming up. But we heard about that they decided... Radio Nottingham called us whilst we were in Germany. We were in London or somewhere doing something and we got a call from Radio Nottingham and they said, oh, what do you think? Congratulations. Congratulations, we got this grant and we were like, what? And we heard via Radio Nottingham that we'd been given a four-year grant leading all the way up to the Olympics in 84 and we were just like thrilled, weren't we?

29:03I left school at 15, became a police cadet. And so my father, Jane's parents, they all worked all their life. And that's what I knew. That's what you did. We were just going to work, work and work. And so when we decided to put our careers on hold, it was a huge thing because when you're at school, your day's organized. Two weeks later, I'm in the police cadets. you're organised, you're organised, you're organised and then we decided that we were going to quit our jobs and suddenly you're in this void of like what's the day when you wake up? I mean obviously we would train as much as we can but that allowed us to go to Germany but it was a big thing at the time wasn't it?

29:48To not have a job because you didn't consider skating was a hobby still. We were so naive we went to the dole office to sign on because some of the other skaters said we'll just go sign on and you'll get some money. So we went and, you know, one of the first questions is, what sort of employment are you seeking? We said, we're not. We're just not going to work. We want to train. Because we want to skate. And he said, there you go. That was before we got the grant. That's how naive we were. Yeah, it's funny. Well, not long after 84, you couldn't have walked in a dole office without everyone in there wanting to...

30:22Well, it would have been an autograph then, not a photo because nobody had mobile phones. Yeah.

30:32I'm really interested in what life was like after 1984. You know, a former office clerk, a former police officer, both of you from very normal, humble upbringing, both of you grafted for years with no money, just with pure love for skating, and suddenly you're arguably the two most famous people in the country. How was that? So we went back to Germany and carried on our training. And I think at the Olympics, one thing that surprised us was how much more media was there. I mean, naively, we just, you know, we used to have four or five English press, but, you know, the world's press were there. And we knew then, we definitely didn't want to go back to the UK.

31:10We wanted to go to Germany and carry on training. But eventually we did come back to the UK. After the world championships. We couldn't believe how many people had watched. and, you know, because we thought, oh, this was a month or two months ago, so they'll have forgotten about it now. But they certainly hadn't. And we ended up doing a parade around Nottingham on like a Popemobile where you stand and you wave. But the Nottingham even posted put it in the paper where the route was going. And we were all a bit embarrassed by it all. Anyway, we got in. We thought no one would be there. And the streets were lined all the way into the city centre.

31:49From our houses. And then the square was awash of people as well. So it was, you know, life afterwards, you don't realise what that four minutes at an Olympics can do. So can you take us into the waiting time before that four minutes? Because that's a really stark comment you're saying. You're four years of built up to it. And I'm interested in how do you control the nerves? How do you deal with... I get very insular. I don't talk to anybody or see anybody. I don't really talk to people, but we were talking about this the other day, that at a major competition and certainly at the Olympics, you have in the female dressing room, you've got a spot where you always put your things and that's where you sit and put your skates on.

32:33And sometimes if somebody less senior, like lower down the ranking, comes in and goes to your spot, it's like a big deal. And someone, I didn't even have to tell people that they put their bag on my, other people did. Certainly Karen, Chris's partner, who was on the team as well, she moved, she famously says that she moved someone's back because she knew that I was going to sit there. It's superstition at that point. Yeah, it is. It's all of those regular things. Everything that you do, you repeat. Well, you sit in the same place, you put the same boot on. You put the left boot on first and so on.

33:12There's this thing of, I have the guards that cover your blades that they have to be lined up next to each other facing into the ice, don't move them. They have to stay like that. Little things that get you to the ice. Chris would always pace. I'd get to the dressing room, he'd get to the dressing room, but then when he got his skates on, he would pace up and down the corridor, whereas I'd sit because in my head I was resting and saving my energy. Chris had to pace because I don't know why you had to pace. I can't be inactive. The little activity just keeps it ticking over. Did you speak to each other about these routines?

33:48We wouldn't speak, actually, once we got to the building, to the arena. Why? I don't know. No need to say anything by that time. We were in the zone. We knew what we had to do. Yeah. It was just an eye glance. And then it was just a hand squeeze as we... There we go. Oh, it gives you goosebumps just thinking about that moment. It must be so vivid in your mind still, the moment you go out onto the ice, not as Olympic champions. It's interesting because every time we were just out in Sarajevo, and so we actually saw a lot of replays of the routine. But watching it takes you back there. I mean, if I'm honest, when I think about it, it's sort of a big collage of events and not specific second by second.

34:34So when you actually watch it, there again, you can go. and I think we did when you stood there at the barrier just before they announced your name that's one of those moments of like this is it you know everything not that we felt like that but I think we can watch it now and say everything depends on this moment when you watch it back retrospectively but we know it went well so you can breathe this out and while it was happening did you know it was going well? did you think we're going to win the bloody Olympics here? no that thought wasn't there the thought was in what we were doing and being in that moment, in that sort of love story that we were trying to tell people.

35:15And what I remember about it is that the audience were pretty quiet. Once we got on and started to kneel, there was kind of a real pfft in the room of I don't know how many thousand people. But the more quiet they were, I think for us it was a good sign because they were drawn along with the story. and it wasn't until the end where we heard lots of applause that you kind of go, whew, back in the room. It was like, you know, there's slow motion where there's lots of action going on in a movie, but then slow-mo it down. And then at the end of it, it's going to go, and it comes back at you. That's what it was like at the end, that we were almost woken up by the applause because it was all slow motion as we were going.

35:57I mean, the dance itself had that feel to it, but in our heads, you know, it's like a racing driver. They always say if it's slow, you're driving fast. And in a sense, we were in that same state of flow. It was just all, we'd done it day in, day out for nine months, ten months, the same, the same. And so here we were. And we always say that what we're doing at these Olympics in the aesthetics that we're doing, you're not trying to go beyond what you've ever done before. You don't go a bit faster or push a bit harder. and you just stay within them. That's not the day to push them out. No, to contain it.

36:37That's the day that you want it all to come as you know it can happen. So can I ask you in the preceding bit, there's a study that was done back in the 1970s with figure skaters, where they found that good and champion figure skaters made similar levels of mistakes, but the difference was how they responded to the mistakes, almost the self-talk and how they processed it. So you obviously must have made a number of mistakes to be able to deliver for that four minutes on Olympic final day. How would you deal with it with each other? What was the sort of conversations you'd have for mistakes and correcting each other?

37:13Generally, a mistake you carry through it. Work through the mistake. If you're training and you're doing a run-through of the whole routine. As we're building things up, it's like a piece of wood that's square that you're wanting to make as smooth as you can. so that routine you're trying to get as fluid and and and easy and fluid and silky as you can that everything just it's it's almost like tai chi you almost want for that routine anyway even a fast routine wants to feel like that too it never wants to feel like a strain so you're working working your body movements the timing the twitch and everything wants to feel like it's this fluidity and as you're training it, as you start, it's not and so all the difficult bits are the pieces that you work on the most to get as smooth as you can and then when you feel it's at almost a level you then run it and run it and run it and even when it's not quite right, carry through that because you don't want that to become a stopping point you don't want to go, oh, here it comes, here it comes did we get through it?

38:26You've got to push through that. There's no jagged edges to the routine. As Chris said, you get to a level, when you first start a routine, you start with little sections because you're building. And once it's complete, there's a certain point in the training several weeks down the line where you say, right, we're going to try and do a run-through of the whole thing in four minutes, whatever. And four minutes doesn't sound very long, but it is long. It can be long. Depending on the routine. Yeah, and once we've said to each other, right, we're going to run through today. And as Chris said, quite often there's little blips and mistakes.

39:03But it's that team thing, like, I'm not going to stop if I've made a mistake. Even if it's like a proper trip or something, I'll jump up and carry on. And that's how you do it in training. And you learn from those mistakes because you think, oh, you kind of analyse it and think, oh, I did that because my weight was too much on the left and I need to be this and so on. And then it might be a hold that you miss the hand and you work out, why did I miss that hand? But I think those are the things that along the way, even though they go wrong, it's kind of satisfying because then you figure out what went wrong and how to make it right.

39:38And the routine gradually improves. I think that when people operate in an elite space, as you have done for all of your lives, we all assume that they must be just ruthless, hard-nosed, constant focus on the goal. But actually what you've spoken about so much here is actually empathy. Understanding that your partner is going to make a mistake. Understanding that they may have a physical issue at that moment that is holding them back. So how do you get the balance right between wanting the very best for you and your partner but accepting failure? There is tension at certain points. And there has to be that level of tension if it's all too mediocre.

40:19Would you give us insight into one of those? Because I think when people think of you two, they think, oh, they met 50 years ago and haven't had a crossword since. But I think it's important to talk about what it looked like and how you dealt with it. Chris has mellowed with age. He's done something for me. Let's be really honest then. What was he like really early on? He used to get, if we made a mistake early on, whether it was him or me or both of us, he used to get frustrated. and I used to say, oh, let's just do it again because I was the calm, laid-back one and he used to get uptight. It's the yang and the yang, isn't it?

40:52Yeah, definitely. I think we complement it. I would be one to push and Jane would be one to go, we can do it. No, let's just do it again. We'll do it again. And I think because we understood each other, if he was getting tense, I knew why he was tense because he wanted to make it better. It wasn't for any... It wasn't getting mad at you. It wasn't getting mad at me for any unrelated reason. It wasn't a personal thing. It was to get the skating right. What would you like to thank the other person for, for what they gave you in your skating career to finish off with? Ooh. Oh, I think just that we did it together.

41:27Thanks for being my partner. Thank you for being my partner. There's not much more to say than that. We're best friends, aren't we? Putting up with me. Putting up with me. Yeah. We've been together, we've known each other since we were 10 years old. and now we're a lot older. And so we've grown up through all those seasons of your life. And to get to this point, it's there. It gets emotional, doesn't it? No, I'm all right. No, you're all right. You are a bit emotional. She's very stone-hearted at times. Yeah, I'm called stone-hearted. I can see that made you a bit emotional. Yeah. What was it?

42:08I guess it's all the memories. It's a passage of time. I think, yeah, you look back and suddenly there's a life gone by. You wouldn't change it and it's been happy, but it's like, oh, gosh. We quite often have these bizarre conversations and Chris will say, do you remember when we had dinner with so-and-so and it'd be somebody famous? And I said, we never had dinner with them. Tell you we have to jog each other's memories. And he'll say, yeah, we did. Because we went to the... I said, really? And then vice versa, he'll say, Sam, it's just like... And then you kind of think of all the things that you've done, never mind the skating or the other lovely things that we've been able to do, be a part of.

42:55I think we must be one of the longest lasting double X that you can think of. Yeah. Do you not get emotional or do you just not allow yourself to go there? she's not as emotional as I am no I do sometimes I do sometimes come on Jane what do you get emotional about? oh dogs well I think do you know when I get emotional is when I'm angry and that's usually to do with kids right and then I don't like the feeling of being angry so it makes me cry and then I'm okay after that more than yeah amazing right Right, some quick fire questions.

43:41The three non-negotiable behaviours that you and the people around you should buy into? Ooh, kindness, respect, and... What's the other? I can't think of the word. Can I just tell you it? Yeah, go on. Honesty. Honesty, that's it, yeah. Kindness, honesty, and respect. That's how well you know each other. What would you go for? That one too. Yeah. I mean... I couldn't think of it honestly. We've grown like this together. Our roots are so entwined now. But as a, oh, I don't know if this is going to be a question, but something for me that I would love to find that I'm getting towards it, and it's contentment.

44:23My dad worked all his life. He was a minor. And I look back at him, and he didn't have much, but he was content. He was happy with his lot. And I think it's something that a lot of people, if you can find, it's a wonderful place to be because you're happy with your love. You'll be in your camper van. I hope you find it. I'm going to name it contentment. I hope you find it because that is the joy that everyone's long for. Thank you. Yeah, I do too. What's the single best piece of advice you've ever received and why? I think for us, there's a partnership, and it was that eye contact that gave us, I think that everybody bought into, it sounds like contrived, but the honesty of a performance that we were doing.

45:13And so I think honesty in a sense of how we put it out there, but I think in life as well, I think honesty is a good trait. If you could give one piece of advice to a young Jane or a young Chris, what would it be? What's the famous saying about work? The harder you work, the luckier you get. because some people say oh you're so lucky but you think actually and the other cliche is um failed to prepare prepared to fail yeah i mean preparation is everything if you could go back to one moment of your life what would it be and why i think again finishing ballero yeah that moment was sliding on the ice yeah you notice he said the finish not the beginning yeah yeah But that's the moment of...

46:12Well, all the work. It's the peak, isn't it? It's that pinnacle moment that you get to that point and it's there and everything's come together. You don't know what's after it and everything that's gone before it, but that single precise second is that moment and you go, it's almost like that inhale of breath. Yeah. And can I ask you, just briefly, At that moment, was it relief or contentment you felt? It was euphoria. Yeah. I think what we knew in that moment was that we'd skated the best we could. And we've talked about all the preparations and everything. And we knew in that moment, because you could be unlucky, you could catch a rut or a little hole in the ice and trip over, but we didn't.

47:01That would have been very unlucky. but we knew that we'd given it our best and then whatever the judges made of it, we knew we couldn't have done any better. And finally, your one golden rule that you'd like to leave our audience with for living a high-performance life? Finding the joy. Finding the joy in what you do. Enjoy being able to enjoy what you do. Well, I think you both have and it's an absolute pleasure for you to share so much with us and thank you. Thank you very much. We've enjoyed it. That was, yeah, intense. Thank you. Thanks for giving us our trip down memory lane in such details as well.

47:40The thing is, you know, getting emotional is no bad thing because look at what you've done. And so few people will ever reach those moments, have those pinnacles, sense those emotions that you had. You can't take that lightly. I think we've been so fortunate that in a sporting career, a lot of sporting careers, it's hard to go on to whatever the next thing is. Whether you stay in the sport, is it a sport that has a life thereafter? Whereas we were fortunate with skating that we were able to then go on tour around the world, taking professional tours. And then this show Dancing on Ice coming around.

48:16So all of that's been so fortunate for us that it's kept our longevity going. Well done, guys. what a privilege that was to sit down with two people who've been partners for so long and understand exactly what it takes and the lesson that stays with me is that all came down to just four minutes you know they trained when they were sick when they were injured when they were exhausted but that is what it takes that is true preparation and as for the partnership that idea of knowing your role never letting the team down even when one person in the team even if the team as just two people is struggling.

48:51I think the mutual respect, what did they say? If you're going, I'm going is absolutely vital. And Chris being the visionary, Jane being the calm one, it's all about balance. And what was their golden rule? Find the joy in what you do. Well, look, I hope that you found joy in listening to that conversation. If you're watching Team GB at the Winter Olympics like me, remember, it might look effortless, but the amount of work to get to this point is just incredible. Thanks for listening to High Performance. Hit subscribe and we'll see you next time.