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Jemma fiddles nervously with the hem of her purple training jacket as she watches Fitz, her ice dance partner, converse hurriedly with their coach. It’s the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics and despite the British pair having won the World Championships for the last three consecutive years, she has never felt this petrified before.
Maybe it’s due to the fact they’re attempting something never before done in the history of ice skating, and Jemma really likes following the rules. But, as Fitz and their Coach have reassured her hundreds of times, they aren’t technically breaking the rules. Ravel’s Bolero was the perfect composition for their free dance, but the problem lay in the length of the track. Originally 17 minutes long, the pair and their team had worked tirelessly to condense it down to a skateable version, yet it was still 18 seconds in excess of Olympic rules. The Bolero was a perfect soundtrack, and she and Fitz had refused to give up on their dream, which led to many late nights scouring the Olympic rule book looking for a loop-hole. And they’d found it. Whilst the length of the free dance must be 4 minutes long, plus or minus ten seconds, the actual timing of a skating routine does not begin until the skaters start skating. If they did not place their blades on the ice for the first 18 seconds of the music, they would have the maximum skating time remaining. So long as they stayed within these boundaries, they weren’t breaking any rules.
“Jemma?” a hand on her knee breaks her out of her stupor, and she glances up at her partner. His curls are messy, evidence of his nervous habit to run his hands through his hair, but there’s a smile on his face and a glint in his eye. She can see the adrenaline running through his body, but she knows him well enough to recognise the nerves. It’s always the same; they’re so in synch with each other the commentators have said they appear “psychically linked on the ice”.
“We can do this. We’ve practiced it a thousand times, I’ll be beside you the whole damn time, and we’re gonna smash this, like we always do, together.” His pre-skate pep talk rarely changes, but it always brings a smile to her face.
They’re Fitzsimmons. If anyone can win this gold medal, they can.
She smiles up at him, pushing herself off the bench to hug him tightly before unzipping her jacket and checking her hair is secure. The previous competitors have finished their routine, the odd flower has been cleared off the ice and the scores are rolling across the board.
“Representing Great Britain, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons!”
A roar rolls across the stadium, the union jack rippling across random parts of the crowds, and the darlings of British Ice Skating remove their skate guards, squeeze in one last hug with their coach before stepping onto the ice hand in hand.
Her heart feels like it’s going to burst out of her chest as they glide to the centre of the rink, their purple outfits stark against the ice. One last squeeze of his hand before them lower to their knees, cheek to cheek, so close she can feel his breath graze her neck.
Silence surrounds them as they raise their arms to shoulder height and begin to sway, in time to the first strains of music. Counting the seconds, they nod at exactly the same time as they hit the remaining four minute mark and Jemma smiles as she leans forwards towards Fitz who twists her up, over and onto the ice. As she glides around him, her pivots smooth and edges clean she feels the thrill overtake her and when Fitz rises next to her and takes her in hold as they begin the throes of their routine, she knows they’ve got this.
When they drop dead into a slide at the end of the routine, his arms stretched out along her leg, she knows it’s the best they’ve ever skated this routine. The screams and stampedes that sound out across the rink are deafening, chants of “Fitzsimmons! Fitzsimmons!” so loud she fears the stadium may cave in.
She feels exhilarated, adrenaline pumping through her system as they step off the ice hand-in-hand and deep down she knows they’re going to be the ones to beat this year. But no-one, no-one could possibly predict the maximum possible nine 6.0s they received for artistic impression, or that Fitzsimmons would go down in history as the highest scoring figure skaters of all time for a single programme.