Retiring Miura, Kihara eye big future for pairs in Japan

TOKYO — Japan's Olympic pairs figure skating champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara revealed Tuesday they decided to retire immediately after winning gold at February's Milan Cortina Winter Games, but they vowed to keep raising the profile of their sporting discipline.

The star duo known as "Riku-Ryu" announced the end of their competitive career on April 17 after winning every major senior title including the world championships, Grand Prix Final and the Four Continents.

"Riku reached out to me in 2019, when I'd probably have retired otherwise," said 33-year-old Kihara, who was in tears at the start of the press conference in Tokyo.

"We wouldn't have come this far if it weren't for Riku. I only have a sense of gratitude for her and am grateful to have met the best partner."

Miura, 24, said, "The seven years we've spent as partners helped me really grow not just as an athlete, but also as a human being. These seven years have been a precious time."

Kihara placed 18th at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and 21st four years later in Pyeongchang with his previous partners before forming a new pair with Miura. They placed seventh at the 2022 Beijing Games.

The 2023 and 2025 world champions made an underwhelming start in Milan, placing fifth in the short program, but they turned their fortunes around with a world-record score in the free skate, giving Japan its first Olympic pairs gold.

They gradually began to feel this would be their last season upon reclaiming the world championship in 2025 in Boston, two years after winning the title on home ice in Saitama during the 2022-23 season, making them Japan's first pairs winners in all major tournaments bar the Olympics.

"There was talk of us skating for four more years after we started fifth in the short program (in Milan)," Miura said. "But we believed in the things we'd built upon and managed to give everything (in the free skate). The moment the Olympics were over, we'd decided on missing the following worlds and retiring."

The pair has been based in Canada for the past seven seasons and established a dynamic skating style -- regarded as the fastest in the world -- after "doing things that had to be done each day with no compromise" and forming an unwavering mutual trust, according to Kihara.

"There's a nine-year gap between us but we both tell each other our feelings without hiding them," Miura said. "It's a tiny thing but I can trust him because he trusts me, and it was a repetition of that."

"We sync perfectly on the rink but have totally opposite characters in our private lives, and that also made it fun being together, as well as making new discoveries."

Kihara, like Miura, said he was grateful for the "home" atmosphere created by their fans wherever they performed around the globe, and that they had dedicated themselves completely to their skating, aiming to continually improve their craft.

"We've seen each other up close and there wouldn't have been such trust if it were just saying positive things with no follow-up action," he said. "But seeing it put into practice helped us develop trust."

The pair indicated the plan to go into coaching, but they must gain certification first. They aim to increase the number of Japanese skaters entering pairs and want more fans to witness pairs skating live.

"When we started off as a pair, we moved overseas straight away, as there was no pairs coach in Japan. But (moving abroad) is really a difficult hurdle to clear...and language barriers could be an issue as well," Miura said.

"We had a long period of the podium not being filled (due to a lack of entrants) at the nationals. I strongly hope we can fill it in the future, even if they were only the ones we've coached."

Kihara, hopeful of having two or three groups of six pairs at the future nationals, said pairs skating had its own unique appeal and was hopeful of it coming out of the shadows of the higher-profile singles.

"For the foreseeable future, I want to carry out activities to let everyone in Japan know what pairs is," Kihara said. "I want to convey it's fun to do pairs, and there's a wall we can't clear alone but can by being a pair."

"I don't want this (boom) to end just with these Olympics but want to have figure skaters doing the sport because they want to do pairs in the future."

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