A few days ago, in an interview with RT, Evgeni Plushenko's wife and well-known producer Yana Rudkovskaya, speaking of a special relationship with Tatyana Tarasova, rightly noted: they say, there are very few people in sports whose life is completely subordinated to the profession and nothing else in it simply does not exist.

And then she cited Yuzuru Hanyu as an example.

Over the course of many years, we have had the opportunity to observe the successes of the Japanese, his failures, overcoming circumstances, severe injuries, in a word, everything that makes up the life of an outstanding athlete.

It seemed that it would always be like this, so now the three short words “Yuzuru ended his career” simply do not fit in my head.

Cinematically, the whole life story of Hanyu, of course, should have been crowned with a great victory.

Above myself, above Nathan Chen, above the quadruple axel, finally.

But life is always tougher.

The greater the athlete, the longer his sports path continues, the less chance there is to leave undefeated, not publicly trampled.

Do you want examples?

A lot of them.

One can recall the crushing defeats at the end of the careers of three-time Olympic champion Alexander Karelin, four-time - Alexander Popov or two-time winner of the Games Svetlana Khorkina.

You can draw a parallel between Hanyu and the Japanese gymnast Kohei Uchimura, who lost the home Olympics.

Six-time absolute world champion, which is especially highly valued in artistic gymnastics, two-time Olympic winner in the all-around category.

And in Tokyo, the great athlete failed to qualify for the finals on the crossbar, where five times in the previous ten years he climbed the podium of the world championships.

Did that failure make Uchimura any less great?

Of course no.

In the same way that the crushing defeat in Beijing 2022 did not reflect on the greatness of Hanyu.

“We, the Japanese, put above all not the moment when the athlete stands on the podium, but how he overcomes failures, overcomes himself.

How to get up from the lowest point, if you suddenly happen to fall.

Because it is then that it becomes truly clear what a person is worth, ”a colleague once explained to me.

In this wording - the whole sports life of Hanyu, in which he managed to do a lot.

Twice became the Olympic champion, twice won the world crown, four times became the winner of the Grand Prix finals, the winner of the Four Continents Tournament.

The outer side of the legendary skater's life - with bodyguards, countless armies of fans around the world and sky-high fees - was a wonderful entourage for a celestial.

But within the ice, the celestial sometimes miraculously turned into a living and far from perfect person: with banal mistakes, miscalculations, absurd injuries and not always explainable actions.

Probably, the greatness of Hanyu is also in this: he was never afraid to show the world his own weakness in those moments when, for some reason, he could not remain strong.

Interestingly, just a day before Yuzuru announced his retirement from amateur ice, an American coach of Russian origin Vadim Shebeko said, talking about women's skating, that he would especially single out Evgeny Medvedev.

That it was she who, in his opinion, marked the beginning of the modern era of Russian dominance in women's figure skating.

It seems to be strange: Medvedev did not become an Olympic champion, as Yulia Lipnitskaya did in 2014 and Anna Shcherbakova in 2022, her jumps were not extremely difficult and technical, like Alexandra Trusova’s, in terms of physical data and beauty of skating the figure skater can hardly be put on the same level with Kamila Valieva, and in general you cannot call her a long-liver in sports - in this regard, priorities will always remain with Carolina Kostner and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva.

But it was Medvedeva, with her perseverance, stubbornness and strength of character, who at one time set the level of pretensions and stability, which became a guideline for everyone who came to the women's ice after her.

It was she who launched this era into space.

As well as Hanya - his own, striving to bring men's single skating to the level of the highest, sometimes inaccessible to understanding art, intertwined with transcendent complexity.

It is already clear how men's single skating will exist without Hanyu.

No worse than without Nathan Chen, although the American, despite all his statements, still has an excellent chance to return to the sport for the 2026 Games and try to become an Olympic champion for the second time.

It's just that even if this happens, Chen is unlikely to remain the only and unattainable star: in this regard, the world of men's single skating in a matter of days transferred 17-year-old Ilya Malinin to another dimension, jumping the axel that never submitted to Hanyu in four turns.

How Yuzuru will exist without figure skating is a much more complicated question.

At a press conference dedicated to the end of his career, the skater said that he intended to continue skating outside of amateur ice.

But the professional market is now extremely narrow to consider such a replacement equivalent.

“I will continue to do everything in my power, I will continue to work on a four and a half turn jump in the confidence that I will succeed in front of everyone,” the skater told reporters, and hardly anyone thought that with such an attitude the Japanese do not need to leave the ice at all.

It is possible to take a break, take a break from constant competitive stress, heal injuries.

After all, in four years Hanyu will be in his early 30s, not at all the age to consider himself a veteran.

And if he comes back...

How the hell would that be great!