Cancer has forced Oxfordshire's oldest ice dancer to hang up his skates more than 60 years after he fell in love with the sport.

Les Elliott, 84, has been a familiar sight at the Oxford Ice Rink in Oxpens since it was built.

But he has regretfully abandoned skating because his sense of balance has suffered since being diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago.

Mr Elliott has broken bones twice in the past year through falls while skating and doctors have advised him to quit the sport he has enjoyed since the 1930s.

Mr Elliott, of Boxhill Walk, Abingdon, said: "I fell down for no reason, I was not trying to do a triple jump or anything, so I discussed it with the doctor and he told me to stop."

The decision was a hard one to make for Mr Elliott, who performed regularly with long-time dance partner Monica Hannigan, from Southmoor.

"Skating with a partner is a magnetic sensation," he said. "It's tremendous to be able to both dance and manage the exact steps, perfectly synchronised to music. You could say I fell in love with it."

Mr Elliott began skating in 1936, when he first visited Wembley Ice Rink, in London.

During the war he worked on radar in Malvern, Worcestershire, then moved to Abingdon after being employed as an engineer on the Atomic Energy Project in Harwell, near Didcot.

There was no rink in Oxford then, so Mr Elliott co-founded the Oxford Ice Skating Trust (OXIST) with friends he met skating on the frozen Thames, in Port Meadow, in 1980.

The group arranged trips to rinks in Southampton, Peterborough, Bristol and Richmond and campaigned for Oxford to have its own facility, which bore fruit in 1984 with the construction of the Oxpens rink.

Today the rink loses £200,000 annually and the city council have been considering closing it temporarily, or selling it, a situation Mr Elliott finds hard to understand.

He said: "Ice rinks are very popular, they are building a new one in Nottingham for millions of pounds, so I can't see what the problem is in Oxford."

Mr Elliott now keeps away from the rink.

He said: "I couldn't bear to sit there and watch other skaters without joining in."