Romain Haguenauer, coach to the 2018 and 2022 world and Olympic ice dance champions, said that if figure skating had to stop using popular music, it would be “catastrophic.”

“Right now, everybody is able to still submit all their music, with the ISU asking, Please, please, start to get the legal clearance,” said Shawn Rettstatt, chair of the ISU ice dance technical committee.

The British pair had broken new ground in ice dance by moving away from the sport’s origens in ballroom dancing and the ballet-influenced style of the then-dominant Soviet Union.

They were the first pair not from the Soviet Union to win Olympic gold in ice dance.

Nine days hence lay a risky, risqué, gamble: a shot at Olympic ice dance gold which depended on a routine that bent the rules and challenged convention - a free dance number that could burn up like chiffon to a spark.