Lion King routine takes Fear and Gibson into top ten

Figure Skating 14 Feb 22

Ice dancers Lewis Gibson and Lilah Fear insist entertainment will always come first as they cracked the top ten on their Olympic debut.

Gibson and Fear were contacted by American glam rock band Kiss on social media after using 'I Was Made For Loving You' in a medley of tunes for their short programme.

While rivals used a succession of mournful piano medleys for their free skate, Gibson and Fear turned up the tempo and turned on the West End style with music from the Lion King, finishing tenth.

"Our music choice is about us, it's about being uplifting and being us and choosing music that shows the joy we feel on the ice. We are drawn to up-tempo and exciting pieces of music, we search for them," said Fear, who trains with Scot Gibson in Montreal.

"It was a real pinch me moment when they got in touch. We were hoping they were going to see our performance because we are such huge fans.

"They've inspired us as performers, their performance quality, talk about going all out and attacking what you are doing, that's what any athlete wants to do."

It was 38 years to the day since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won ice dance gold in Sarajevo with a perfect six routine to Ravel's Bolero.

British success has been in short supply since, with no medal since they returned to the Olympic stage in 1994, when they won bronze in Lillehammer.

But the iconic duo believe Gibson and Fear could represent the best chance to crack skating's top performers since Scottish brother and sister John and Sinead Kerr, two-time European bronze medalists and Olympians in Vancouver and Sochi.

"We know this is a special day for British ice skating," added Fear.

"Jayne and Chris sent us a video message wishing us good luck and we had a Zoom call with them before we left where they expressed their belief in us and that made us feel so empowered before our Olympic debut.

"It was so much fun and everything we wanted, it was the feeling we'd been visualising up to this point. It's hard to not look at the scores but we are just trying to feel anchored to this moment.

"It's hard to compare competition to competition but the performance was definitely better than the Europeans."

Gibson and Fear have been together for six years - which in ice dance terms is not long, some of their opponents spending more than a decade together.

They compete again at the World Championships in Montpellier in March, where they will look to improve on their seventh place last year.

They will then return to their Montreal training base, where they work with Romain Haguenauer, who guided Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir to three World Championships and two Olympic titles

"I feel such confidence leaving this experience, we completed two really good performances at the Olympics. It can be daunting but knowing we can do it, just fills us with optimism," said Fear.

"Knowing we've done it well is the biggest thing, we didn't shy away from the experience.

"We're excited to go and train with everyone on the team at Montreal. There will be so much growth for everyone over the next four years. A new Olympic quad brings such excitement."

Gibson added: "Maturity is a big part of the sport, we've been together six years which sounds a long time but it's not in ice dancing terms. We want to keep jumping up the rankings."