Christopher Dean

Christopher Dean
Full name	Christopher Colin Dean
nation	United Kingdom
birthday	July 27, 1958
place of birth	Nottingham, England
size	180 cm
Weight	73 kg
Career
discipline	Ice dance
Partner	Jayne Torvill
Trainer	Betty Callaway, Janet Sawbridge
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 4 × 0 × 0 × EM medals 4 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Sarajevo 1984 Ice dance bronze Lillehammer 1994 Ice dance  World figure skating championships gold Hartford 1981 Ice dance gold Copenhagen 1982 Ice dance gold Helsinki 1983 Ice dance gold Ottawa 1984 Ice dance  European figure skating championships gold Innsbruck 1981 Ice dance gold Lyon 1982 Ice dance gold Budapest 1984 Ice dance gold Copenhagen 1994 Ice dance

Christopher Colin Dean , OBE (born July 27, 1958 in Nottingham , England ) is a former British figure skater who started in ice dancing .

Career

Christopher Dean started figure skating when he was ten years old and received ice skates for Christmas. His parents were dancers. During his school days he was the captain of his soccer team. In 1972 he switched to ice dancing and started in the junior division with Sandra Elson. At the age of 16, Dean left school and started working for the Nottingham Police Department. In 1975 Jayne Torvill became his ice dance partner. Torvill and Dean were initially trained by Janet Sawbridge . In 1978 they changed coach and went to Betty Callaway . They could only train after Dean's working hours, which was only possible through great discipline.

In 1978 Torvill and Dean made their debut at world and European championships . In 1980 they played their first Olympic Games in Lake Placid and finished them in fifth place. At world and European championships they still missed the podium as fourth. At this point, Dean had already given up his job and was now fully focused on sports. He acted as a choreographer for the team himself . In 1981 the triumphant advance of Torvill and Dean began. They became European champions in Innsbruck and world champions in Hartford . In 1982 they defended their European championship title in Lyon and their world championship title in Copenhagen . In 1983 they did not take part in the European Championship due to a fall injury Torvills, but won the gold medal at the World Championship in Helsinki . In 1984 they made the total triumph perfect when they became European champions in Budapest , Olympic champions in Sarajevo and world champions in Ottawa for the fourth time in a row.

The 1984 freestyle by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean based on the music to Maurice Ravel's Boléro became world famous and was even featured as a video clip in some hit parades. At the Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo in 1984, they received the ideal grade of 6.0 in the B-grade for the presentation nine times for this freestyle - that was the highest possible rating and the only time that this was achieved. In addition, they received the highest rating in the A grade three times. Torvill and Dean's Olympic appearance was one of the most popular events in British sports history; 24 million Britons watched the ice dancing couple in front of the television screens. Both were voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year , UK Sportsman of the Year , in the same year . It was the first time that the award had been given to two people in one year.

After the World Cup in 1984, Torvill and Dean became professionals, but in 1994, like Katarina Witt , they took advantage of the ISU's offer to be reamateurised. They won gold at the European Championships in Copenhagen. Ten years after their Olympic victory , they took part in the Winter Olympics again in Lillehammer in 1994 and won the bronze medal in an extremely exciting decision for ice dancing. From 1981 to 1983, Torvill and Dean were voted Team of the Year in Great Britain three times in a row. In 1989 they were inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame . They were also awarded the Jacques Favart Order, the highest honor of the International Skating Union, by the ISU . He was also awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1999 .

In 2006, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean appeared together on the ice for the first time in almost ten years in the British version of Dancing on Ice .

In 2018 he choreographed Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot's freestyle with Torvill , with which they won the gold medal in pair skating with a world record at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang .

Personal

From 1991 to 1993 Christopher Dean was married to the ice dancer Isabelle Duchesnay , whom he met when he was creating choreographies for her and her brother in the late 1980s. On October 15, 1994, he married Jill Trenary , the 1990 world figure skating champion, in Minneapolis . They have two sons. The marriage was divorced in 2010.

Results

Ice dance

(with Jayne Torvill )

Competition / year	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981	1982	1983	1984	1994
winter Olympics				5.				1.	3.
World championships		11.	8th.	4th	1.	1.	1.	1.
European championships		9.	6th	4th	1.	1.		1.	1.
British Championships	2.	3.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

Web links

Commons : Christopher Dean  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Christopher Dean in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Official website of the ice dancing couple

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Only a wonder of the world could help: Christopher Dean choreographed her freestyle on zeit.de. Retrieved February 15, 2018.