Naomi Osaka salutes fellow Japanese sports icon Yuzuru Hanyu after figure skater’s retirement

Legends recognize legends: Naomi Osaka paid tribute to fellow Japanese sports icon Yuzuru Hanyu in the wake of the two-time Olympic champion’s retirement announcement on Tuesday.

Osaka, who has her own Olympic memories from lighting to torch at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and has been in Japan this week, retweeted a fan account summing up Hanyu’s illustrious career and shared the post on her Instagram stories.

Both Osaka and Hanyu have been trailblazers in their respective sports for much of the last decade: Osaka was the first Asian woman to become the WTA’s world No. 1 and the first Japanese woman to win a Grand Slam singles title, while Hanyu was the first Asian man to win an Olympic gold in at the 2014 Sochi Games—repeating the feat four years later in Pyeongchang.

Osaka can count herself among Hanyu’s famed “Fanyu,” tweeting about the star skater ahead of his second Olympic run:

Though the four-time Grand Slam champion left Tokyo without a medal, she kicked off an important conversation about mental health that left an indelible mark on the sporting world.

“I think the biggest eye-opener was going to the Olympics and having other athletes come up to me and say that they were really glad that I did what I did,” Osaka recalled at the Western & Southern Open. “So after all that, yeah, I'm proud of what I did, and I think it was something that needed to be done.”

With the Paris Summer Games less than two years away, might Osaka yet join Hanyu in the Olympic pantheon?