Japanese figure skater
Daisuke Takahashi
, a bronze medalist at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, announced his retirement from high performance on Monday.
"We have made the decision to retire from competitions after this season
," Takahashi warned along with his current partner,
Kana Muramoto
, with whom he had formed a
successful tandem
since 2020 after leaving individual figure skating.
The decision was agreed upon "after much discussion," Muramoto points out in the video, adding that this Tuesday they will give a press conference, in which they are expected to explain the reasons.
Takahashi, 37, was still one of the most important and beloved athletes among the public in the Asian country.
He was a forerunner.
It's that he became the first Japanese to win an Olympic medal in men's figure skating.
And he didn't stop there.
He was also the first to achieve a podium finish in the Skating Grand Prix (2005) and to win gold in the same event (2012).
The skater participated in three editions of the Olympic Games: Turin 2006, Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014.
His career was plagued by injuries
, the most important in 2008, when he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
Kana Muramoto and Daisuke Takahashi, in action, at the Saitama World Cup.
Source: AFP
However,
Takahashi came back with everything.
After recovering, he won the bronze medal at Vancouver 2010 and later gold at the world championships that same year in Turin.
In November 2013, he began to suffer from problems again in that knee and had to repeatedly extract synovial fluid.
A year later, he managed to compete at the Sochi Games, where his compatriot Hanyu won gold and Takahashi came sixth.
Five times champion of Japan, the skater had announced his retirement from figure skating at the age of 28 in October 2014, after taking a few months off to rethink his future.
Four years later Takahashi would compete again, although only for two seasons before surprisingly announcing her move to ice dance, which generated great expectations.
Takahashi and Muramoto (30) debuted in the 2020-2021 season, but failed to qualify for the 2022 Beijing Games. They would make it to this year's World Cups, held in the Japanese city of Saitama, where the couple was ranked number 11, the highest to date for a Japanese tandem.
Source: EFE
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