‘I was in love with Chris’: Dancing on Ice’s Jane Torvill admits falling for skating partner Christopher Dean

Star also sobbed as she told Piers Morgan about the ‘trauma’ of having IVF treatment


‘I left it quite late’: Emotional Jayne opens up about problems with having children(Image: ITV)

Skating Icon Jayne Torvill has admitted she “fell in love” with partner Christopher Dean – but the pair say they only “dabbled” and a snog was as far as the relationship ever went .

The pair confirmed they did kiss on the back of a coach, but never had a proper relationship.

In a new TV interview Jayne, 55, said: “Well you see, when I first saw Chris, I fell in love with him but then we started skating together and that was it, it was done.”

Chris, 54, then admits to “a bit of a dabble” on the coach but says a kiss and cuddle is as far as it went during their careers, which climaxed with gold at the 1984 Olympics.

It is thought the incident happened when they were teenagers shortly after they began skating together as amateurs in 1975, when Dean was 16 and Torvill was 17.

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Questioned by Piers Morgan on ITV’s Life Stories, Chris said: We may have dabbled slightly, We sat on the back seat of one of those coaches.”

Asked if there had been some kissing, he added: “There might have been.”

Pressed further he said that was “categorically” as far as it went.

Chris said: “It’s an unusual relationship that we have. And yet at the same time, of course we love each other. You wouldn’t be able to do all that we do without love. I wouldn’t trade her in.”

Emotional Jayne also opened up about the ‘trauma’ of having IVF treatment before she adopted her son and daughter after failing to have give birth.

She has been happily married to US sound engineer Phil Christensen for 23 years and the couple have two adopted children Kieran, ten, and Jessica, six.

In tears as she said: “As a couple skating together it’s easy for the guy to go off and start a family because it wouldn’t affect his skating, whereas for me it would have stopped what we were doing. So I left it quite late.

“And I was into my forties by then. And having an ectopic pregnancy as well, I got pregnant quite quickly and I thought, ‘Oh, this is fine’.

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“And when I went to have a scan they said I had an ectopic pregnancy, and I didn’t know what that meant.

“They said, ‘The embryo’s growing in one of the tubes.’ And I said, ‘Oh, ok, so how do you get it out then?’ And they said, ‘We don’t. We can’t.’ So that’s when it hit me. So I went through the surgery and then it was obvious it was going to be more difficult. So we tried IVF for about a year. That, as a lot of women know, is traumatic in itself.”

Jayne then told how she went on to adopt their two children after her friend did the same thing.

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She said: “Well, a friend of mine had adopted a little boy. She said, ‘Come and see him.’ And at that point I wasn’t ready to look into adoption, I was still thinking it was going to happen, and you’ve got to be ready for it, if you want to adopt. I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know if I could do this.’ And I went to see this little boy and I wanted to bring him home.”

On the show, Chris talked about getting together with Karen Barber and how she nursed him through his marriage breakdown from former US figure skater Jill Trenary, with whom he had two children, Jack and Sam.

Jayne and Karen took turns to stay over at his house to help him over a broken heart and that is when he and Dancing On Ice judge Karen began to form their own relationship.