Torvill, Dean Apply for ’94 Eligibility : Skating: Britons are remembered for perfect free-dance performance when they won gold medal at Sarajevo in 1984.

How the mighty have risen.

One day after Brian Boitano, the 1988 Winter Olympic men’s figure skating champion, applied to regain his eligibility, the most acclaimed ice dancers in the sport’s history, Great Britain’s Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, announced their return.

“We spent 10 months pondering a move before we decided that we needed another challenge,” Torvill said during a news conference at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday.

Torvill, 35, and Dean, 34, won four world championships and the gold medal at the 1984 Winter Games at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. But they are remembered less for their titles than for their remarkable free dance performance to Ravel’s “Bolero” at Sarajevo, where they received perfect scores of 6.0 from all nine judges.

In the nine years since, a former U.S. ice dancer, Judy Blumberg, who finished fourth with partner Michael Seibert at Sarajevo, said no other team has surpassed Torvill and Dean.

“While you might not always like what they do, they do it with perfection and commitment,” she said. “They’re brilliant, and we could all use a little of their brilliance right now.”

Torvill and Dean are the latest to take advantage of an International Skating Union rule adopted last summer that allows professionals to seek reinstatement once during their careers.

Besides Boitano, other Olympic gold medalists who previously announced they will attempt to qualify for the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway, include Germany’s Katarina Witt (1984, ‘88), Ukraine’s Viktor Petrenko (1992) and Russian pairs teams Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov (1988) and Natasha Mishkutienok and Artur Dmitriev (1992).

Torvill and Dean are not planning to compete before Great Britain’s national championships in November, but they will appear on a U.S. tour that will make stops at the Forum on June 12 and the Anaheim Arena on June 23.