Olympic rower Sir Steve Redgrave has joined Dancing On Ice along with reality stars Mollie Pearce and Ferne McCann and Coronation Street actor Sam Aston.

Sir Steve, 62, was confirmed for the 2025 series of the ITV ice skating show on Monday after McCann and Pearce.

He told ITV’s This Morning that the production team has told him not to practise skating until the first official training session for the reality show.

Sir Steve also said: “There are all these people trying to persuade me now to do it, I can’t dance, I can’t skate, why am I doing this show? I’ve got no idea at all.”

The five-time Olympic rowing champion dismissed a suggestion his experience would help, saying: “It ends up being people who are not very co-ordinated because it’s a repetitive sport doing the same movements over and over again.”

He also said it is “like going back to being an athlete again” as he retired 24 years ago, and claimed his friends think him taking part on Dancing On Ice is a “midlife crisis”.

Steve Redgrave and his wife Ann
Steve Redgrave and his wife Ann (David Davies/PA)

Sir Steve said: “I’m too old for a midlife crisis, I’m far past that end.”

He added that he needs shoes made for him for skating as he is a wide size 12.

Sir Steve said: “I must be closest to being one of the oldest, if not the oldest, on the show, but I’m certainly the heaviest that’s ever been on the show, 120 kilos, so that’s around 20 stone, so I’m not light, and I’ve been asking (for) somebody big that can lift me.”

On the same programme, Aston, who is known for playing ITV soap character Chesney Brown, was named fourth, and said that he was “nervous but excited to get going”.

Pearce, the second celebrity confirmed for the 2025 series of the ITV ice skating show, was sent a message by fellow stoma bag user, radio DJ Adele Roberts, who competed on Dancing On Ice last year.

The model is known for making it to the final of the psychological game show The Traitors until she was betrayed by her friend Harry Clark, who won the second series.

Pearce told ITV’s Lorraine: “It will be fun, I want to challenge myself, I’m ready for the challenge.”

However, she said that she “hasn’t started” practising yet, but she does have experience skating with her mother when she was younger.

Roberts sent her a video message saying this was the “most incredible news”, before thanking her for also bringing awareness of stoma bags.

The latest series of The Traitors won the reality competition gong at the National Television Awards (NTAs).

In The Traitors Pearce chose to banish a faithful instead of British Army engineer Clark, who was a traitor, and when it was revealed, she memorably stormed out of the room, hurt and upset. Pearce has since forgiven Clark, and has attended red carpet events with him.

McCann, a former The Only Way Is Essex regular, made the “really difficult decision” to quit her ITVBe reality show My Family And Me earlier this month, and said she was “so excited” to take on the “huge challenge” as she became the first Dancing On Ice contestant named.

Ferne McCann with her children
Ferne McCann with her children Sunday (left) and Finty (Yui Mok/PA)

A total of 10 more celebrities will be revealed at a later stage.

McCann, 34, also explained her decision to leave her own reality series, which had been titled First Time Mum after first launching in 2017.

She told GMB that her six-year-old daughter asked her if she “was famous”, which troubled her.

McCann said: “I know it sounds really contradictory, because we’ve had the reality show, and it’s all Sunday’s ever known, it’s actually … normal for her to film (the) show, and it really just stopped me in my tracks, and it made feel really uncomfortable.”

McCann added that she made “the decision to be famous” but her child did not, and she thought it best to take a break so she “does not have to come home from school and film”.

The reality star also featured on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2015, and shares another daughter named Finty with her fiance, property developer Lorri Haines.

Sunday is from a relationship with her ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins.

In December 2017, Collins was handed a 20-year jail sentence for carrying out an acid attack in a packed nightclub.

Last year, Holly Willoughby returned to present Dancing On Ice, this time with a new host in the form of Stephen Mulhern, with whom she previously presented ITV Saturday morning children’s show Ministry Of Mayhem.

Mulhern replaced Phillip Schofield after he resigned from ITV having admitted to a relationship with a male This Morning employee.

Willoughby quit This Morning in October last year.