Yuzuru Hanyu, the two-time Olympic champion, said on Tuesday that he would no longer participate in competitions, and the landscape of the sport of figure skating will never be the same.
To get an idea of how much he has meant to his sport for the past dozen years, consider some of the fans who watched him compete at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
In one corner of the arena, three generations of Hanyu fans — a teenage boy, his middle-aged mother and his gray-haired grandmother — sat on the edge of their seats, straining for a glimpse of him.