Yuzuru Hanyu retires from figure skating: ‘I stopped wanting to be evaluated’

Yuzuru Hanyu, a two-time Olympic champion and arguably the greatest male singles figure skater in history, announced his retirement on Tuesday at age 27.

“I’ll no longer be able to be compared with other competitors,” he said in a Tokyo news conference, according to a Kyodo News translation. “In terms of results, I’ve achieved the things I could achieve. I stopped wanting to be evaluated.”

Hanyu won the 2014 and 2018 Olympic titles, then placed fourth at his third Olympics and, it turns out, his last competition, in February.

After an eighth-place short program took him out of the running for gold, Hanyu attempted the first quadruple Axel in Olympic competition despite reinjuring an ankle between the two programs. He fell, and it was deemed under-rotated.

Back then, he said, “I would love to skate at the Olympic Games once again,” but that he didn’t know if Beijing would ultimately be his last Games.

“After the Beijing Olympics when I got home, I couldn’t skate because of the pain in the ankle,” he said Tuesday, according to Olympics.com. “I thought about all kinds of things then, but I felt that I don’t need to be on this stage forever.”

Hanyu reportedly said he plans to continue skating professionally in non-competitive shows.

“I carried on until Beijing in pursuit of the quad Axel, but I feel I can do it, not necessarily in competitions,” he said, according to Kyodo. “I actually feel it gives a chance for more people to witness it [in person].”

Hanyu was a precocious talent who started skating at age 4, winning the world junior title at age 15 in 2010.

The epicenter of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was 80 miles from his native Sendai. He was training at the time — “I ran out of the building in my skating