You know, I always suspected that the man had wings on his ankles. The heights he reaches with just a simple leap from the ice are absolutely astonishing!!!

I well remember these performances! ... thanks, princess, for posting the links.

I loved John Curry - ballet on ice!

I think there's been no follow-on for much as the same reason as there is no follow-on in ballroom dancing: we - the English; the British whatever - get good at something and tend to rest on our laurels, leaving the rest of the world to work much harder and overtake us. I don't think our skaters, or our dancers, have gone downhill so much as they just haven't kept up. We don't seem to be a competitive nation, and judging what is happening in the schools, it can only get worse.

Thankyou so much!

Watched his interview from GMTV earlier int he week this morning. He's lovely!

No - since we had all the success in the 70's and 80s we have had a nanny state which is determined to stamp out excellence at anything. If everyone can't be a winner then no-one can. Anyone who is any good at their chosen sport has to fight tooth and nail to get any support, and have usually to go abroad to get decent coaching as well.

They allow all the school and council sports fields to be sold off and then wonder why we don't win medals at the World/ Europoean Champs and Olympics.

The reason the likes of Russia and E Germany won all those medals (and China today) is that their potential stars are / were identified early on and got unlimited support and training to develop their skills (OK the drugs probably helped too ) Our potential stars get nothing.

Too right. My kids even went to what is laughingly called a 'sports college' under the governments 'specialist schools programme but figure skating is not even recognised as a sport in their PE programme so they could not use it as part of their PE GCSE despite training 3 times a week and having gone to the National championships.

It'a very expensive and if there is no support many talented skaters have to drop out. Even the Kerrs had their funding withdrawn at one point. Plus there is a policy of not sending people to internationals unless they are guaranteed to do well so international competition exposure and experience is limited, which is daft.

There is NO support whatsoever at the lower levels and no system to identify talent early on and support those people.

Oooohhhh...I so agree! Competition is no longer seen as being `healthy'...and you are quite right about the school playing fields. It's extremely frustrating & I will be using my vote very wisely in the next election...!!!

We wouldn't have had much of Torvill & Dean had not Nottingham City Council decided to support them from 1981 through to the Olympics in 1984. Yet to my inexperienced eye the potential is there to see in their 1980 perfomance (they wore green, can't readily find a link on You Tube) and their 1981 'Fame' performance is still one of my favourites.

I agree, Jason is given too much air time - it seems it pays to be critical if you're a RTV judge ...