How it unfolded
Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean prepared a 4-minute, 28-second free dance set to Ravel's Bolero, though the regulation limit was 4 minutes 10 seconds and the clock started the moment a blade moved on the ice. To comply with the rule, they began the program kneeling motionless on the ice for the first 18 seconds, effectively starting their first movement from a standstill. When the performance ended, every judge awarded a perfect 6.0 for artistic impression, the only unanimous set of maximum marks in Olympic figure skating history. The Soviet Union's Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin took silver, marking a rare occasion when Britain outdid the Soviet Union's long ice dance dominance. Torvill and Dean turned professional immediately after this win, and returned a decade later under relaxed reinstatement rules to compete at Lillehammer in 1994, adding a bronze medal.
Why it still matters
These four minutes are still considered the most famous program in figure skating history, and are credited with turning ice dance away from ballroom-dance imitation toward narrative choreography and theatrical staging. The opening 18-second stationary sequence that worked around the rules also influenced later revisions to ice dance regulations, and no Olympic program since has matched the unanimous perfect score.