![\"Gold](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/23figure-skating-miura-kihara.jpg\" "\\"Gold")
<\/p>\nJapanese ice-skating champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, affectionately known as ‘Riku-Ryu’, have announced their engagement, solidifying their partnership off the ice after achieving historic Olympic gold in figure skating.<\/p>\n
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IMAGE: Gold medallists Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara celebrate after winning the pairs at the Figure Skating ISU World Championships at TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts, US on March 27, 2025. Photograph: Brian Snyder\/Reuters <\/p>\n
Key Points<\/p>\n
Japanese ice-skating champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, known as ‘Riku-Ryu’, announced their engagement on Sunday.
\nThe couple posted their engagement news on Instagram with a photo of Kihara proposing to Miura on the ice.
\nMiura and Kihara became the first Japanese pair to win Olympic gold in figure skating at the Milano Cortina Winter Games.
\nThey overcame significant challenges, including Kihara’s recurring back injuries and Miura’s chronically dislocated shoulder.
\nTheir gold-medal performance in Milan, built on themes of combat and triumph, earned them a world-record score.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Japanese ice-skating champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who won the hearts of many Japanese in a country where skating can top the news bulletins, announced their engagement on Sunday, becoming partners off as well as on the ice.<\/p>\n
“We’re engaged,” they posted on Instagram with a photo of Kihara kneeling on the ice to present Miura with the ring. “Through both the happy times and the difficult ones, we\u2019ve shared so many moments together, supporting each other every step of the way.”<\/p>\n
A Historic Partnership on Ice<\/p>\n
Known jointly as “Riku-Ryu”, Miura, 24, and Kihara, who turned 34 on Saturday, became the first Japanese pair to win Olympic gold in figure skating at the Milano Cortina Winter Games in February.<\/p>\n
Known for smiling, laughing and hugging — with Kihara sometimes carrying the 146-cm (4-foot-nine-inch) Miura onto and off the ice — the couple have had their share of difficult and happy times from teaming up in 2019 to announcing their retirement from competitive skating in April.<\/p>\n
Overcoming Challenges and Achieving Triumph<\/p>\n
They overcame years of obstacles, with Kihara battling recurring back injuries and Miura repeatedly competing with a chronically dislocated shoulder. The fairytale peak was their Milan performance, built around the themes of combat, survival and triumph.<\/p>\n
They slipped to fifth place on an uncharacteristic error before coming back with a spellbinding free programme, the crowd on their feet long before the final strains of the music from “Gladiator” died out. They earned the gold and a world-record score.<\/p>\n
Kihara, who said he “felt completely devastated” after the setback, immediately burst into tears \u2014 in images replayed countless times on Japanese television. Over time, the couple “became irreplaceable parts of each other\u2019s lives,” they said in Sunday’s post, which had garnered more than 14,000 congratulatory messages within five hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese ice-skating champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, affectionately known as ‘Riku-Ryu’, have announced their engagement, solidifying their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30380,1234,8,17,50579,34161,39693,31254,6320,50578,6322,50580],"class_list":["post-78986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-boston","tag-instagram","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-japanese-ice-skating-champions","tag-massachusetts","tag-milan","tag-olympic","tag-riku-miura","tag-riku-ryu","tag-ryuichi-kihara","tag-td-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}