It’s barely three days into the month of April and, after Joseph Schooling, another famous swimmer of recent times has announced his retirement. It’s about Japan Ryosuke Irie, who this Wednesday also announced his farewell to the high competition. He did this at the age of 34 at a press conference in Tokyo.
“I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart that I’ve had a long career. I would have liked to retire in Paris, but I managed to swim my last race in Tokyo in front of a big crowd. “I couldn’t be happier,” Irie said.
In fact, the Japanese swimmer sought Olympic qualification at the Japanese trials two weeks ago, but He did not qualify for either the 100 backstroke or 200 backstroke. Therefore, since he was not included in the Japanese team for the Paris Games, he decided to go ahead with his decision and end his fruitful career.
Fifteen years have passed since Irie won his first major medal. It was a world silver in the 200 backstroke at the 2009 World Cup in Rome, the era of the ‘magic swimsuits’ boom. It was one of the many stages the Japanese swimmer experienced during fifteen years full of victories on the very front line. So, until his streak was snapped at this last World Cup in Doha, he competed in eight long-course world championships, all in a row: Rome 2009, Shanghai 2011, Barcelona 2013, Kazan 2015, Budapest 2017, Gwangju 2019, Budapest 2022 and Fukuoka 2023.
Olympic in Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021, Irie knew within a few days that his dream of swimming in a fifth Olympic event in Paris 2024 is gone. So, he left with three Olympic medals (silver in 200 backstroke and 4×100 backstroke and bronze in 100 backstroke at London 2012), four world medals (two silver and two bronze), two world bronzes in the short course and eight medals at the Pan-Pacific Championships, one of which is gold (100 backstroke in 2014). Furthermore, he became one of the great dominators of Asian Games in recent years, a competition in which he has six gold, ten silver and two bronze. It was precisely at the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games that his last major international medals came.
Source: La Verdad
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