Riku Miura, Ryuichi Kihara announce retirement as Olympic pairs' figure skating champions

Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara are going out on top, announcing their retirement from figure skating competition after becoming the first Japanese pairs' team to win an Olympic medal — gold in Milan.

In a post shared on both skaters’ social media, they "decided to retire from competitive skating following the end of this season."

"While our competitive careers are coming to an end, we truly feel that we gave it our all, and have no regrets," the post read. "We are proud of everything we went through, and feel we gained so much along the way. The two of us will now take on new challenges so that we can bring wider recognition to pair skating in Japan. We hope that we can count on you to follow us on our journey."

Miura, 24, and Kihara, 33, set numerous firsts for pairs' skating in Japan, which before their rise was known solely for singles success.

Miura and Kihara became a team in 2019, after Kihara competed with different partners at the Olympics in 2014 and 2018, failing to advance to the 16-pair free skate each time.

Kihara, sidelined by a concussion in early 2019, was prepared to retire when he was invited to try out with Miura later that year.

After two seasons interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, they broke out internationally in the 2021-22 season: two Grand Prix podiums, seventh at the Beijing Olympics and then silver at the World Championships — the best finishes by a Japanese pair on all of those stages to that point.

They won world titles in 2023 and 2025, setting them up as a gold-medal contenders for the Milan Cortina Games.

After placing fifth in the Olympic short program, they topped the free skate with a world record score under an eight-year-old points system in what ended up being the last competitive program of their partnership. They won by a convincing 9.49 points over Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia.

"We could not change what happened yesterday," in the short program, their Canadian coach, Bruno Marcotte, said after the free skate. "No matter what happened, I said, 'In five, 10, 20 years, you will remember the feeling of being the best one in the world today.'"