Winter Olympics / Ice Skating: The perfect couple's perfect example: Mark Burton reports on how hunger for hard work changed what was at first a colourless partnership

NOTHING stands in their way, their eyes on Olympic gold and the fame and fortune to follow from victory. She of the solid will, he of the vision, their every action directed towards success. . . in Sarajevo.

That was 10 years ago when their adventurous Bolero routine mesmerised judges and audiences around the world. Times may change, sports may change, but people rarely do. Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean certainly have not. They always were the perfect couple, perfect competitors, the perfect example for would-be champions.

Which is just as well. On the face of it, returning from the world of touring ice dance troupes to competition is like asking Esther Williams to step out of 'Bathing Beauty' and swim for gold. But Torvill and Dean, veterans at 36 and 35, can lean on the experience of their glorious past. They are never half-hearted about anything. Even in the ice shows they staged on the back of the Sarajevo success they preserved the integrity of their skating, putting on their own shows on 'the big ice', like their 'Fire and Ice' routine and their recent Cossack dance. They kept their competitive hands in by entering the showy world professional championships, making the process of retracing their steps less daunting.

Everything is relative, though, and the idea of training at 6am, having finished late the night before, is hardly enticing, especially if you are already rich and famous. The six hours a day, six days a week on the ice for six months paid off with their breeze through the British championships last month, but they needed all their determination and fortune in the vagaries of the scoring system to clinch the European title in Copenhagen a fortnight later.

When the titles and the riches lay ahead, the incentive to work hard was obvious and they realised early on that nothing short of total commitment would do. Torvill had competed internationally, but last place in the 1972 European pairs championships told her that her previous partner was not committed. Dean had also danced with another. He is demanding of his partner in practice and perhaps that caused the parting.

They were both more or less at a loose end in 1975, when Janet Sawbridge, a former international ice dancer, suggested they get together. Boy meets girl might be familiar to most teenagers, but to dedicated skaters with nothing but the rink in their lives - no discos, no parties - the prospect of breaking the ice was almost too troubling. Torvill and Dean were the odd couple after all. He, a police cadet, was shy and already 5ft 10in at 16; she was nervous and just a touch over 5ft tall. They made a tentative start together, but there was something about them, amid all the awkwardness. If Dean is the better dancer of the two, Torvill's eagerness and speed of learning added to the cementing of a working relationship that looked natural almost from the start. 'They had this class about their skating,' Sawbridge said.

Neither comes from an upper-class background, but both were fortunate to be born in Britain's ice skating centre, Nottingham. Torvill, whose parents ran a newsagent's, did not like rented skates and badgered her parents for her own second-hand pair. Dean, although he bought new skates when he started, had to rely on the benevolence of an instructor to carry on when his electrician father was out of work. They knew that nothing came without hard work.

With or without effort, the partnership nearly came to nothing. When they first tried to qualify for the British championships Dean ran into problems in the preliminary tests. But, back on the ice with Torvill, he pulled himself together and skated the last test superbly.

At that stage, they did not cut a convincing pair in everybody's eyes. Courtney Jones, who won the world dance title with two partners and is now an international judge, was not impressed. 'They were very competent, very nice skaters, but very colourless, with little personality.'

It fell to the coach, Betty Callaway, who took them on in 1978 and is working with them again now, to point them in the right direction. She solved a problem for Dean by introducing him to a Hungarian ballet dancer. 'He convinced Chris that a man could be masculine and a dancer, and showed him how to project his feelings,' Callaway said.

By 1980 they were fourth in the world and realised that to compete with the east Europeans they would have to skate full time. 'I didn't want to push Chris, because he had more at stake with a good career in the police force,' Torvill, who worked as an insurance clerk, said. But as Dean put it: 'We knew in the end we would have to take the plunge.'

Sponsorship was not easy to come by but, amid jibes from political rivals, Nottingham City's Labour council offered pounds 14,000 a year for four years. It made all the difference. They could commit all to the cause. A year later they became European champions, won the first of four world titles, and both had the MBE.

And all the professionalism that might have gone into a career went into their 'performance', which included their lives off the ice. They played up the 'do they, don't they' romantic mystery that haunted them until Torvill married Phil Christensen, a sound engineer, in 1990. Dean was choreographing successful championship routines for the innovative French-Canadian brother and sister, Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay. He married Isabelle, but the marriage failed last year.

Their lives are neatly rounded, their professional careers have made them rich, so why have they committed time, effort and pounds 100,000 of their own money to stepping backwards in search of another Olympic gold? They plan one last world tour, which Olympic and world titles would set up nicely.

Perhaps there is a clue right back in the early days of Dean's career. He crashed into the rink barrier and broke his leg. His explanation? 'I just forgot to stop.'

(Photograph omitted)