Oh Machida was great. I loved his firebird. Why did he retire? He was amazing.
I feel exactly the same about them! I don’t wish them to come back to competitions, for the reasons you state, but how I miss seeing them perform the technically and choreographically breathtaking programs that only they could do! They were so mesmerizingly exquisite.Davis & White - mostly for new, beautiful programs that they could present on the biggest stage. Otherwise they achieved virtually everything that was there and left while being at the top.
I feel the same about Yu-na Kim too. I loved her skating up to and including the Vancouver Olympics, but after the comeback it felt (to me) as if something left her skating. I remember watching her Les Miserables several times, trying to feel at least something of what I had felt watching her before, and not understanding why I wasn’t feeling anything (and I love Les Miserables – I even bought a deluxe 2-discs edition soundtrack of the movie that I listen to often). And it was the same during the Olympic season for me. I still have fond memories of her earlier programs, but it’s a bit of a relief for me to know it’s not just me who found her post-comeback skating no longer heartfelt.Yuna Kim - I know that it might be unpopular opinion here but I felt that after 2010 her heart was not in skating anymore. She seemed forced by Korean federation and blase.
The first skater I missed a lot was Midori Ito, although I’d been watching figure skating for some time by then. She was amazing technically, but she also had an amazing personality to match, which transcended her skating – watching her skate made me feel so alive and joyful. I don’t think I ever got that kind of feeling from watching anyone else. I was also upset and angry that she’d had so much pressure put on her to win gold at OG. And back then one couldn’t follow a retired skater’s pro career on the Internet, like today.
Gordeeva and Grinkov is obvious, of course. The two of them were such a picture of perfection, like Plato’s ideal, that no matter what she could have done afterwards, there’s no way it could approach what they were together. And, of course, the tragedy of a talented and wonderful person’s life being cut so short. The one meager consolation is that in his short life he’d achieved far more than most people do in a long life, and I don’t mean medals per se, but having created something that will likely live on forever in people’s hearts.
I also missed Klimova and Ponomarenko when they left the sport, and, unfortunately, it seems that few recordings of them exist on the Internet. If I could choose to see again any fs program from the past that I can’t find on the web, it would be their My Fair Lady.
Kwan, Lambiel, Abbott, Takahashi, Yuna Kim. Tessa and Scott (but no more?)
Jeremy is not officially retired yet, but stopped competing since 2015 Nationals. I had a thin hope for his return to competition before 2016 Nationals.