TOKYO — Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, twice Olympic figure-skating champion whose rock-star like status has been as legendary as his accomplishments on the ice, said he would turn professional, ending more than a decade of competition at the highest level.
In an hour-long news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday where he seemed pensive and relieved, the 27-year-old shunned the word “retirement”, saying he looked forward to pushing his skills to an even higher level on a different stage.
“I thought of quitting a lot of times, after every competition, after PyeongChang too,” Hanyu said, referring to the 2018 Winter Games where he won a second consecutive gold.
Wearing a dark suit and silver tie, Hanyu said he finally came to a decision after this year’s Beijing Olympics, where, having sustained an ankle injury during practice, he fell short of his goal of winning a third gold and finished fourth.
It was the end of a storied competition career for the man considered one of the greatest skaters of all time – a run that also included two world championship wins, four Grand Prix final crowns and six victories at the Japan nationals.
“I thought of many things” while my ankle was healing, he told a packed news conference. “And I thought, I don’t need to be on this stage; I can get better in a different way.”
A skating phenomenon known for his artistry and devoted fans, Hanyu said he saw the next stage of his skating career as a beginning, not an end.
Hanyu added that he would continue to pursue the quadruple Axel, or “4A” – a 4-1/2-rotation jump never before landed by anyone in competition.
Hanyu had built up anticipation for the Beijing competition by promising to attempt the “4A” but failed to land it.
“At Beijing, I didn’t make it to the top, but I think that it was a place where I could prove that I could keep on fighting.”
Legendary popularity
A rare mistake during his short program when he missed an opening quadruple Salchow jump cost him precious points at the Beijing Games.
Blaming a divot in the ice for making him skip the jump, Hanyu said he was comfortable with his level of concentration and lamented, with a forced laugh: “Nothing was wrong with my skating, so I’m thinking maybe the ice doesn’t like me anymore.”
With fans, however, the slender, photogenic Hanyu has been wildly popular throughout his career. Many would follow him from competition to competition, shouting “Yuzu!” and throwing stuffed Winnie-the-Poohs onto the ice after a performance.
His determination has been equally acclaimed. He became the first man in over half-a-century to win back-to-back Olympic golds in 2018 while skating on an injured ankle that he was taking painkillers to overcome.
A native of Sendai in northern Japan, Hanyu was practising when the 9.0 magnitude March 11, 2011, earthquake struck. He fled the rink in his skates as the ice cracked around him.
He and his family subsequently spent time in an evacuation center because of damage to their home, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers on a gymnasium floor.
Later, a tribute routine to the disaster victims became a part of his exhibition repertoire.
Known for his pre-performance rituals, which included having a box of tissues in a Pooh container at the ringside and slapping the sides of the rink before skating onto it, Hanyu could also be impish, teasing photographers at rinkside.
But it was his ferocious powers of concentration that kept his skating skills near peak level at an age when many skaters decide to call it quits that won him the respect of his fellow skaters, none of whom counted him out for a third Olympic gold.
—Reporting by Elaine Lies and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Andrew Heavens/Bradley Perrett/Ken Ferris
