Rowing legend Redgrave set for ice-dance challenge

It has been 24 years since Sir Steve Redgrave stepped away from a boat after five consecutive Olympic gold medals. But since October last year, the most-decorated Olympic male rower of all time has been back into training – on ice.

Redgrave has just started competing in the latest series of British reality show Dancing on Ice. The show takes 12 celebrities and matches them with professional skaters who teach them to ice dance, with one couple eliminated from the competition each week.

In this year’s series Redgrave, now 62 years old, is the oldest – and tallest – contestant, and he says the learning curve has been steep.

“It’s been interesting, at the age I am now, trying to pick up something new,” he tells World Rowing. “In some ways I wish it was 10 or 20 years ago, but I’ve been really enjoying the experience.

“Two of the contestants weren’t even born when I won my last Olympic gold medal,” he adds.

Redgrave has been learning to skate since October for two hours every weekday, but he confesses he still feels like a beginner.

“If I was teaching somebody to row and they’d done about 60 hours of trying, I’d be expecting them to be potentially going forward to try and win races, not just stay in the boat,” he says.

“Some bits I’ve just found it really difficult to pick up, even though rowers have really good balance. Perhaps it’s an age thing, perhaps it’s just an ability thing, perhaps I’m carrying too many injuries from when I was an athlete.”

Redgrave was persuaded into the show by his old friends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. Torvill and Dean are, like Redgrave himself, British sporting legends, after winning ice dance gold at the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympic Games with their performance to Ravel’s Bolero. Back then, the summer and winter Olympics were held in the same year, so Torvill and Dean’s first Olympic gold medal came in the same year as Redgrave’s at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games.

Since their respective retirements, Redgrave and Torvill and Dean have all acted as ambassadors at various Olympic Games, particularly for London 2012, and know each other well.

“Chris has said a number of times we need to get you on the show and I always said no,” Redgrave says, adding that eventually he was persuaded.

It was a slowish start for Redgrave, who did not even have ice dancing skates at his first sessions because none had been found to fit his wide size 48 (UK size 12) feet. Since then, a pair of skates have been sourced, and slowly Redgrave and his skating partner Vicky Ogden have been working on their routines.

Redgrave confesses that he has enjoyed getting back into training.

“The bit that I hated about rowing was that every day was the same, we only raced three or four weeks a year and we were training 49 weeks a year,” he says, but reveals that he has found the skating routine compelling.

“It’s really been all-consuming for the last three months and now we’re into the TV side of it it’s even more consuming. It’s a huge commitment but I’ve been loving every minute of it,” he says.

Redgrave’s first performance was on Sunday, to the tune of ‘Don’t Rock the Boat, Baby’, which he skated wearing a sailor suit with shorts.

Before the show, he said: “It could be all over this Sunday. The first three eliminations are a joint of the panel which Chris and Jayne are on, and a mixture with the public vote. So I need to rely on the public vote to get me through a few rounds. I’ve got to be entertaining, I’ve got to put a smile on people’s faces.”

In the first show Redgrave and Ogden finished bottom of the judges’ scoring, but were saved by the public vote and the relief on Redgrave’s face when the results were announced was clear.

He says he is generally quite a negative person, and feels like he is starting at the bottom of the pack, so is calling on the rowing community to help out with voting, either by phone or on the official website during the Sunday shows.

“Someone who can’t dance, someone who can’t skate, doing a live TV show with millions of people watching, what the hell am I doing?” he says.

Rowing – and skating – fans can keep supporting Redgrave next weekend, when Dancing on Ice screens on the UK TV channel ITV. Redgrave now also has an Instagram account, @sirsteveredgrave, to follow his skating journey as long as it lasts.