Speaking on the BBC Two documentary Torvill and Dean: The Perfect Day, Dean described how, during the warm-up before the free dance final, he deliberately went over to the spot on the ice where he and his partner would be performing a critical part of their routine and roughened the ice surface with his skate blades.

"In the warm up I went out and scuffed the ice up a little bit," Dean said.

"Because fresh, clean ice is slippy.

"I knew the spot where we would be and I skidded on it a few times."

Torvill, skating apart from Dean in the warm-up, unlike all their competitors, noticed.

"I saw him scuffing the ice in the middle," she said.

"It was just a little ploy.

"It was quite clever, I thought."

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean en route to Olympic ice dance gold at the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, where they will return this week to reprise their famed Bolero routine ©Getty Images

The British pair will skate once more on February 13 - a day before the 30th anniversary of their gold medal performance on Valentine's Day - to the torrid, sinuous musical composition of Maurice Ravel's after accepting an invitation from the Mayors of Sarajevo and East Sarajevo.

The performance is intended to raise funds for Sarajevo's hosting of the 2017 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival, involving young athletes from among the 48 member nations of the European Olympic Committees (EOC).

"If we can, in some small way, attract a bit of attention for them, it will be worthwhile," Torvill said.

"Plus it will be fantastic for us personally to be able to go and do that there."

They will thus return to the arena renamed as the Olympic Hall Juan Antonio Samaranch following the death of the former International Olympic Committee (IOC) President in 2010, but which was known back in 1984 as the Olympic Hall Zetra.

The original Hall was destroyed by shells in 1992 during the siege of Sarajevo, which took place during the Bosnian war, but it was rebuilt in 1999 with the help of an $11.5 million (£7 million/€8 million) donation from the IOC.

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