By Hiro Yoshida

Since their first Olympic appearance back in 2022, Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson have continued on an upward trajectory culminating in a bronze medal at this year’s World Championships back in March. With another Olympics just months away, the British duo relish the opportunity to take themselves to even greater heights.

The 2024-2025 season began strongly for Fear and Gibson with four international golds from four competition, including two Grand Prix wins at Skate America and Finlandia Trophy over America’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates at the former and Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier at the latter. They advanced to the Grand Prix Final in Grenoble, France where they bagged bronze. It was the first medal for Great Britain ever in the history of the event.

Going into this year’s European Championships in Tallinn, Estonia back in January, they had legitimate expectations of improving on their two previous silver medals at the event. Instead, they ended up third. This was to be their only real blip of the season as they rallied back in Boston, United States of America in March to become the first British skaters to take home a World medal in over forty years. It was a lifelong ambition fulfilled for the team.

“It was cheesy, but a dream come true,” Fear said. “I visualised that moment for years, and then to actually have it happen, it was an out of body experience. Sitting in the Kiss and Cry, just the amount of emotion that flooded my body. It was unbelievable, and just something that was so special. On top that, I feel like we really earned it, and that’s even more gratifying. It’s something that was possible for us, and we put the work in and made it happen, and I’m so proud of that.”

After the rhythm dance in Boston, Fear and Gibson had been sitting in third place. Following their free dance, they had an anxious wait in the Kiss and Cry with their coach Romain Haguenauer. When their scores came up, the skaters and their coach initially thought they had missed out on a medal. However, moments later the mood would change to unbridled joy when they discovered they had made the podium.

“We came off and then we were waiting,” Gibson recalled. “It came up and it’s fourth, and Roman’s reaction told me that it was a no.”

“Because we thought he knew the place we had to beat,” Fear said. “We thought, ‘Oh, it must be that we didn’t get it.’

“When it changed to first, it was a feeling of, ‘Oh my God! This has actually happened,’ Gibson said.

“The reaction was better because we thought we missed it,” Fear said. “When it was first, it was just the coolest thing.”

Fear and Gibson wound up sixth in the free dance with their combined score keeping them in third by less than a point. Although not completely satisfied with their own performance in the free, the duo were happy that their competitors received the scores they deserved and feel it is a sign of health for ice dance.

“It’s so exciting that the sport allows for that to happen because everyone has a shot,” Fear said. “It’s all about what happens on the day and the people that skate the best on the day are hopefully rewarded. It allows for excitement for the audience and also within the sport to realise that anything’s possible for anyone.”

“We had a little error on the lift, but everything else, we executed as well as we could do for the programme and the training that we’ve had,” Gibson said. “I’m happy that we managed that under the pressure in that arena.”

“I think also we’ve learned throughout our careers that you can feel so happy after a skate and then get to the Kiss and Cry and get a score that can really dampen the mood,” Fear said. “We don’t want to give that power away anymore. We really try to hold on to that feeling and appreciate the moment in the end pose where we check in with ourselves and feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so satisfied with that. I’m so proud of that.’

Although veterans in their discipline at this stage, Fear and Gibson have still not skated together for as long as many of their closest rivals. For the teams they shared the World podium with back in March it was the second time they had competed at a World Championships in Boston. In 2016, Fear and Gibson’s partnership was in its mere infancy and qualifying for Worlds, never mind winning a medal, would have been a lofty goal.

“Honestly, it was a little bit of a pinching myself moment,” Gibson said. “We were sat with our small medals at the press conference for the rhythm dance, and the other two couples were talking about 2016 Boston, and the competition that they had there. I was thinking about how we had only been skating together for three months and I had only been doing ice dance for three months at that point. Now we’re up there sat next to them. That was wild.”

As mentioned previously, the third place in Boston was the first medal for any British competitor since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean back in 1984. Even four decades on their popularity in the United Kingdom is as strong as ever and this year the 1984 Olympic champions announced that they were finally hanging up their skates after a farewell tour. Needless to say, Torvill and Dean have had an immense influence on British ice dance and their primetime television series “Dancing On Ice” was behind Gibson taking up skating in the first place.

“To be linked to them in that way, it’s so meaningful,” Fear said. “I can say for myself, but then especially for you because they were the reason you started the sport, to be doing things that close to what they’ve done, it’s really amazing and we’re so proud.

“It’s so incredible that legacy that they’ve left and the amount of time that they’ve had this impact and will continue to,” Fear continued. “They’ve really kept ice dance alive in Great Britain. When you say figure skating, or ice dance, or anything to do with skates, people know Jayne and Chris. It’s a testament to the achievements that they’ve had and the way that they touch the public where it’s lasted in their memory for that long and is something that continues to ignite passion and joy and fondness.”

Even though they received an offer to be part of the Torvill and Dean’s final tour, due to their preparations for the Olympic season Fear and Gibson were unable to take part.

“It’s too difficult to give up time heading into an Olympic season,” Gibson explained. “We were asked, of course, to be a part of it by Chris, which we’re so thankful for and he completely understood.”

This season will also provide another opportunity to emulate Torvill and Dean as Fear and Gibson will be in the hunt for a first British European title since 1994 and at home no less.

“We’re just so grateful that we will have Europeans in Sheffield because we’ve competed against and seen all of our competitors at their home ice and we see how special that is,” Fear said. “We got to experience that in some way at the Grand Prix in Sheffield, and that’s a smaller scale than what this is going to be and it was unbelievable and so heartwarming and emotional. Firstly, to get to skate there and be the British team in Britain going for gold is such an honour and something that we’ll be very grateful for, to let in all that love, and then hopefully do the nation proud with our performances.”

“I was 11 when I started,” Gibson said. “I used to watch skating so much on YouTube, on TV, as much as I could. I was obsessed with it. I would dream of these scenarios, ‘I would love to skate in Japan one day, but the only way is NHK or Worlds. How is that ever going to happen?’ And then it happens. Lilah just said to compete for gold in your home country. I never imagined it, but I’m so grateful for that and I want to cherish every second of it because it’s a complete dream come true. It’s just the best case scenario ever to be in that position.”

“There’s no pressure with that,” Fear said. “We are so lucky to get to say that. That’s a dream. We want to live that and take it all in and just express through our skating how grateful we are to get to do that.”

The last time Europeans were in Sheffield in 2012 Fear was in the arena as a flower girl collecting items thrown from the audience onto the ice for the competing skaters. It was a source of inspiration for her and she and Gibson are looking forward to providing motivation for the next generation.

“I remember all the practices I had to go to,” Fear said. “I took the train to Sheffield every weekend from London to flower girl practice. We weren’t allowed to skid stop because we couldn’t mess up the ice, so I remember it was kind of difficult the technique of being a flower girl. I also remember I got to give Jenna McCorkell her teddy after her free skate. I was just star struck and didn’t talk and that was that. But it was really cool because we got to sit right by the ice. After the rhythm dance, we spoke to some of the flower girls in Boston and just seeing their front row seats, and being so close to these role models, it’s something that I really cherished as a kid. I hope that we can see those flower children in Sheffield and say, ‘That could be you. Get out there. Work hard. We’ll be cheering for you.’

Torvill and Dean aside, both Fear and Gibson cite the powerhouse ice dance teams of the early 2010s as the kind of skaters they aspired to be.

“Tessa (Virtue) and Scott (Moir) are the reason I do ice dance,” Fear said. “I saw them in 2010 and I was just so entranced by their free dance. Then I became obsessed watching videos, and I made them my screen saver on the family laptop. They really just paved the way for how much fun they were having out there, the portrayals and characters and the way they were dancing. It looked so free and I thought, ‘Where’s a boy that I can skate with?’ Luckily, this guy came along.”

“I remember watching Tessa and Scott and Meryl (Davis) and Charlie (White),” Gibson recalled. “Those two teams were really standalones for me. Their programmes and concepts felt just fresher and more modern. I think that really stood out for me. It was less of the pageantry of ice dance as it used to be. I guess they were my first interaction of seeing ice dancers, apart from obviously knowing Jayne and Chris from Dancing On Ice.”

Fear and Gibson have become known for their crowd pleasing and rousing performances using music from Donna Summer to The Lion King to Beyonce. They admit that there has been no overriding strategy behind their choices except to perform what they have been passionate about for each season.

“There’s no formula to that list,” Gibson said.

“It’s not all planned out years in advance,” Fear added. “We get to the year and we look at what we’re excited about.”

This season will be no exception in terms of entertaining routines with their recent announcements of a Spice Girls themed rhythm dance and a free dance to Scottish rock duo The Proclaimers.

“It’s going to be Lilah and Lewis,” Fear said. “It’s going to be us in a way you haven’t seen us before, but also in a way that will make a lot of sense. It’s us at our core, and we’re going to keep dancing always and entertaining and having so much fun out there.”

This season sees a number of high profile ice dancers returning to competition, including the newly formed team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron who train alongside Fear and Gibson at the Ice Academy of Montreal. Rather than shying away from the challenge presented by other teams, Fear and Gibson are invigorated at the prospect of pitting themselves against their rivals both old and new.

“We know both of them very well and we’ve trained with them for years,” Fear said about Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron. “We’ve toured in Japan with Guillaume and worked with him as a coach too. We know who they are as people, and their passion for the sport, which is clearly still alive and well. I think that it’s very courageous always to start fresh, regardless of who it is, with a new partnership. I’m excited for them to be seizing this journey, and I wish them all the best too.

“We want to be our best when everyone’s at their best too, because that is what we wish for everyone and what makes the sport exciting, not only to participate in, but to watch. It’s what we signed up for, and we would never shy away from that. We’re excited to see what happens, and we’re going to be focused on us and being as prepared and passionate as possible.”