At the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics the pair won gold and became the highest-scoring figure skaters of all time for a single programme, receiving twelve perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s which included artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge, after skating to Maurice Ravel's Boléro.

The pair turned professional following the 1984 World Championships, regaining amateur status briefly ten years later in 1994 to compete in the Olympics once again.

Although remaining close friends, the pair did not skate together again until they were enticed out of retirement to take part in ITV's Dancing on Ice.

Both are from Nottingham, England, where the National Ice Centre is accessed through a public area known as Bolero Square, in honour of the pair's Olympic achievements.

In a UK poll conducted by Channel 4 in 2002, the British public voted Torvill and Dean's winning performance at the 1984 Winter Olympics as Number 8 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.

[4] Although Torvill and Dean had been able to leave their jobs as an insurance book clerk and policeman, respectively—thanks to grants from the City of Nottingham—they were not allowed to earn any money from skating as long as they wished to remain eligible for the Olympics.

They worked with Australian dance choreographer Graeme Murphy at first, and they were able to create not only routines for themselves but entire ice shows with a thematic coherence, which toured Australia, the U.S., and Europe.

After ten years as professionals, Torvill and Dean decided to return to the amateur arena for the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway (along with other great skaters of the 1980s, such as Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt, following a change in eligibility rules).

[5] Instead, they continued with their planned and very successful "Face the Music" tour, to be followed by numerous other projects: Dean choreographed a suite of dances to the songs of Paul Simon for the English National Ballet, professional competitions, touring with Stars on Ice, and collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and director Patricia Rozema on the video Inspired by Bach: Six Gestures.

In the meantime, they were still choreographing, notably for the dynamic French Ice Dance team, Anissina and Peizerat, who won first place in the World Championships in 2000.

After winning the 1981 World Figure Skating Championships (which brought the distinction of MBEs), and with three more years before the Olympics, they began to plan routines which used a single piece of music and had some narrative or thematic element.

They had learned to choose and edit music carefully and design routines that were appealing both technically and imaginatively, and their completeness of presentation included thematically appropriate costumes.

In July 2018, it was announced that Torvill & Dean, a biographical film docudrama, had been commissioned by ITV, written by William Ivory and produced by Darlow Smithson.