³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

The Kerrs , a solid performance but well outside the medals. They have, however, continued to improve in the years since, and are considered one of in Vancouver in three months' time.

They have won the British national title on every occasion since 2003, including , and with European bronze under their belts, the pair recently earned a second-place finish at the highly-regarded NHK Trophy in Japan.

They have now gone back to Japan to compete in the Grand Prix final, an achievement which even their governing body appeared not to expect - a photo opportunity with the skating team, scheduled for Monday in London, was hastily cancelled once it was learned the Kerrs would be in Japan, not Britain.

But while they have become used to waving a lone flag for GB at world-class skating events, they are no longer our only hope. Britain is sending its strongest team in 16 years to the 2010 Winters, having named the Kerrs alongside fellow dance competitors Nick Buckland and Penny Coomes, pairs skaters David King and Stacey Kemp, and women's figure skater Jenna McCorkell.

"All of a sudden figure skating has become a bit more professional, whereas maybe before it was thinking of itself as a minority sport," 30-year-old Sinead told me. "It has become a lot more professional in its thinking, involving people who know what they're talking about."

"When we did the Olympics in Turin we were the only competitors in the figure skating," added younger brother John, 29. "When it's just you, you're under pressure to perform as the sole representatives of your country in your sport. Having the other guys around us in the village, everybody will feed off each other and do their best job."

That sense of camaraderie needs to be maintained in Vancouver, because the Kerrs remain so far ahead of their team-mates that there is a worry Team GB will become Team Kerr for the duration of the Games. Officials told me that has been the case at some major events in the past and, with the Kerrs' physiotherapist reportedly set to double up as the sport's team leader in Vancouver, it is easy to see how some of the team could slip into a mindset of "as long as Sinead and John do well".

That would be a shame when you see the raw enthusiasm displayed by 20-year-olds Nick Buckland and Penny Coomes, who travel to Vancouver as the Kerrs' understudies but are still determined to produce the performances of their lives. They won the British junior title last year even though Coomes competed with a broken foot, so are more than capable of beating the odds.

Buckland bounded into the room for his video biography, then suffered heckling from his partner when he couldn't think what his 'hidden talent' might be. "I can cook a little bit, but I wouldn't call it a talent," he pondered. "And I can't really do the splits."

"You're really good at guessing how much things cost," exclaimed Coomes, sitting behind the camera. But Buckland seemed less than keen on having a head for prices as his hidden talent. Sat in the hot seat, athletes are intensely aware that what they tell us on camera will probably define them to a vast chunk of our audience, who have never heard of them before the Games and will probably never see them afterwards.

Jenna McCorkell, left, will be part of GB's biggest Olympic skating team since 1994

With that in mind, words are to be chosen carefully, and Coomes cut a fretful figure when asked what her pre-event superstitions are. "I don't want to sound weird," she complained, but with the help of Buckland - behind the camera playfully winding her up - she told the camera how her right boot must be put on first and must be tighter than the left. The part about her intricate pre-skate number-counting ritual was left out, and I have sworn never to go into detail.

John Kerr, asked what he would be doing if he hadn't become a figure skater, had no such inhibitions. "To help pay for my skating, I did some modelling and a bit of extra acting work for a bit, and I was once the body double for Ally McCoist in the movie ," he recalled.

"I spent the day running across a hill pretending to be Ally McCoist. I even got my hair cut like his. I didn't manage to put on quite as much weight as he did but it was good fun, because he was a big hero when I was a kid watching Glasgow Rangers."

His showmanship is evident in the routines he and his sister have chosen to prepare for Vancouver, even if it's hard to detect much of McCoist in their graceful movements on the ice. The two songs chosen by the Kerrs are performed by and , by no means safe options in a sport where classical numbers are still the norm.

"Last year we skated to , a band we really love, and we've always wanted to skate to music that we enjoy listening to," said Sinead. "It surprises us that ice dance hasn't moved forward, but we've picked a piece, in Linkin Park, that isn't going to offend anyone and is very skate-able to. With Johnny Cash, we love listening to him and wanted to pick something a little bit cowboy.

"We've always felt that our responsibility to the sport is to try to bring a new generation of fans into it, and the only way you can do that is by making figure skating cool."

Their Johnny Cash routine even challenges the odd gender stereotype, not a cause traditionally associated with ice dancing. The choreography calls for a truck driver and a hitch-hiker. You might reasonably expect the male to be the truck driver, but Sinead wasn't having that.

"We worked with a world champion country-and-western dancer and he helped us come up with the storyline. We wanted to turn it on its head a bit and make me the truck driver," she explained, before nodding at John and adding: "He knows I'm a toughy."

"Originally he wanted her to wear a back-to-front baseball cap," John pointed out. "So we've toned it down a bit." But even without that finishing touch, it is a lively, exciting and crowd-pleasing routine - ideal, you might say, for an Olympic platform in front of the world.

Next time they sit in front of our cameras, the Kerrs may be Olympic champions. In the meantime, their video biographies will appear on your screen when our 2010 Winter Olympics website launches in the coming weeks.