Sinead and John Kerr, the talented Livingston siblings, start their bid for a fifth consecutive British Skating Championship crown today having established such dominance of their rivals that last year's competition was embarrassingly one-sided.

The Scottish brother and sister team swept to victory by nearly 50 points - the equivalent of winning a golf tournament by 10 shots, or a football match 7-0.

Such unchallenged supremacy does little for the Kerrs, who realise that the future well-being of their sport in Britain has to depend on the efforts of more than one couple, who are likely to retire after the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Which explains why John Kerr, at 26, is pleased by the emergence of another ice dancing Scot in the guise of 22-year-old Mark Hanretty from Glasgow, who has formed a transatlantic partnership with Christina Chitwood from Colorado, and whose recent exploits have convinced Kerr that genuine progress is being made beneath the top flight.

"It wouldn't be healthy if we kept winning by as big a margin as we did last time," he said, "and that's why it is good to see the likes of Mark and Christina arrive on the senior circuit to challenge us, along with established pairs like Philippa Towler-Green and Philip Poole."

He was fresh from a whistle-stop tour of Europe with his older sister, during which they performed in front of capacity crowds in Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

"The best scenario is the British Championships becoming closer every season, with everybody improving their scores," he added. "Our PB tally has risen by more than 20 points this season in Japan and we have to keep that momentum going in advance of the European Championships in Zagreb later this month and then the Worlds in Gothenburg in March.

"It's a hectic schedule, but we are used to it, and our preparations have gone smoothly. We feel that we have learned from our experiences in the 2006-07 campaign, where we maybe got too tied up in setting ourselves all kinds of targets. Basically, this year, we want to defend our title in Sheffield, then a top-five finish in the Europeans is an absolute minimum, before we aim for significant improvement at world level, which means no worse than tenth and, we hope, better than that."

The Kerrs have always been a breath of fresh air in their domain, eschewing the psychobabble which is the lingua franca of so many of their contemporaries.

John, for instance, is concerned by the changes made to the judging system which seem to favour efficient sterility rather than radical adventure. What's more, he is also prepared to discuss the issue of whether the markers are, as many observers have long suspected, not entirely impartial when it comes to adjudicating on their compatriots.

"I'm not saying they do it consciously, but there is a definite bias towards the big, established countries such as the US, Russia and Canada," he said. "The authorities have to work to ensure that everybody gets the same treatment because, if you come from one of the lesser-ranked nations, you tend to be up against it."

That is not the biggest problem in the sport at the moment, though, according to Kerr. "We have to examine the new marking system," he said, "because, as things stand, it encourages uniformity, and the powers-that-be need to understand that audiences will not continue to pay their money to attend the big events if they are boring and regimented and everybody is dancing to the same tune.

"You can see with the success of programmes like Strictly Come Dancing that the public wants variety, thrilling routines. What they don't want is people playing safe and sending spectators to sleep."

The Kerrs could never be accused of robotic repetition but, while they are guaranteed a lucrative future in the ice-show domain, their priority remains the pursuit of an Olympic medal two years from now.