Japanese figure skater Daisuke Takahashi is coming out of a four-year retirement, according to the Olympic medalist and world champion’s website.
“First and foremost, I would like to announce my return to the competition from beginning of the new season,” the statement read. “In 2017 Japan Figure Skating Championships, I had the privilege to be present at the site from media’s standpoint and I was really moved by each skater’s respective positions thus motivations, which made me realize that I want to fight and skate again in such tensed environment.”
Takahashi, 32, last competed at the Sochi Olympics, taking sixth, four years after becoming both the first Japanese male Olympic figure skating medalist (bronze) and world champion.
He returns at an advanced age. For perspective, the last time a 32-year-old competed in Olympic singles skating was 1998.
“It took me nearly 4 years from then, but now I would like to face fully with figure skating, and for me to catch up on my skating from the old days, I realized that returning to the competition is the answer,” Takahashi said on his website. “Being away for 4 years, I understand that it will be beyond my imagination of how difficult it may be for me to get back in the game. But I would like to push and train myself even harder in order for me to achieve the feeling of giving all I’ve got and that is the one thing that I couldn’t accomplish before my retirement. Needless to say but I am really excited and looking forward to skating as a competitor again in front of all the people who have been supporting me for all these years. Wish me luck.”
Takahashi won two other world championships silver medals and finished eighth or better at every worlds and Olympics at which he skated from 2006 through Sochi.
He helped usher in the current deep crop of Japanese men’s skaters, including Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu and silver medalist Shoma Uno.
“I asked him for advice and he has helped me many times,” Hanyu said in a statement when Takahashi retired, according to Agence France-Presse. “As a skater … he will always be someone I look up to.”
The fourth son of a hairdresser and an architect, Takahashi opted not to follow his brothers into karate and began figure skating instead.
He would become one of the beloved athletes in the sport, adored in Japan as a five-time national champion. Fans were brought to tears when it was announced in the arena at the 2013 Japanese Championships that he was placed on the three-man Olympic team despite finishing fifth at that event.
NBC Olympic Research contributed to this report.
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