Torvill, Dean Still Disappointed

AMHERST, Mass. - The bitterness and disappointment of the Lillehammer Olympics still haven't faded for Torvill and Dean. Maybe they never will.

From the beginning of the Games, the English stars who mesmerized the skating world with their 1984 gold-medal performance at Sarajevo never had a chance. The crowds, the media and many of the other skaters lauded them. But the judges, making a last stand against a flood of rules changes, created a backlash against many returning professionals.

The biggest victims were Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

"The whole thing last year, I think there was so much resistance to the professionals coming back," Dean said as he and Torvill prepared for their only competition of the season, last week's World Team Figure Skating Championships. "And there were certain power factions within the skating fraternity and amateur fraternity, and with the strong political leanings, I don't think there was anything we possibly could have done to have won that event.

"In retrospect, because of the result and everything else, the notoriety went up for us. The awareness, because of the criticism leveled at the judging at the time, built from the beginning to the end of the competition. We were seriously questioning the wisdom of our choice to compete, but at the end of it, we felt we accomplished something 10 years after the previous Olympics. It was a benchmark for us to go through all that we had to go through."

What they went through was a complete change in their professional lifestyles. For nearly a decade, Torvill and Dean toured with their own show and skated in only a select few pro events. Until the International Skating Union opened the sport by allowing pros a one-time reinstatement, Torvill and Dean were considered skating legends.

Then, suddenly, they were competitors again, seeking to do the routines that stretched the parameters of ice dancing and popularized what previously was considered more exhibition than sport. What they did was entertaining and athletically difficult, and the public noticed.

But many of the lifts and moves the pair created had been deemed illegal by the ultraconservative dance judges.

"We've been very much a part of creating our environment with our shows," Dean said. "Then you open yourself up to taking a lot of shots, because you are going into someone else's arena."

The duo put together a ballroom salute to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire that was conservative for them, but well within the rules. Then they were shocked to find Oksana Gritschuk and Evgeni Platov of Russia doing a rollicking tribute to Chuck Berry that included the kinds of maneuvers Torvill and Dean were told to eliminate.

Even though Torvill and Dean won the European championship, Gritschuk and Platov took the free dance there. That delivered a message to T&D.

"It was a very difficult time for us, because of the adjustments we had made and then discovering that other couples were being allowed to do things we were advised we could not," Torvill said.

Thankfully, the Olympic experience has not turned off Torvill and Dean to all competition. In fact, they are intrigued by the burgeoning schedule of events spawned by the 1994 Olympics.

"It is something very new for us," Torvill said. "After Lillehammer, we did not anticipate doing any competitions again. We had done enough. We thought at some time we might do a professional competition, but we had no plans to do anything like this, because these international team events didn't exist.

"It being a team thing makes it more appealing."

Torvill and Dean realize their role in the recent popularity explosion for figure skating has been minimal. And they worry about the future of the sport.

"I think it is great so much skating is on TV," she said. "But hopefully there won't be an overkill. It depends on the quality of the events."