12/21/24
August 15, 2013
Wimbledon Champ Marion Bartoli Retires Because of Pain: Only 32 days after surprising the tennis world by winning the Wimbledon title, Marion Bartoli abruptly announced her retirement after losing a second-round match at the Western & Southern Open, a warm-up to the United States Open. "It's time for me to retire and to call it a career. I feel it's time for me to walk away, actually. My body just can't do it anymore. I've been already through a lot of injuries since the beginning of the year. I've been on the tour for so long, and I really push through and leave it all during that Wimbledon."
This makes her Wimbledon win more poignant, certainly. By tradition the champ lugs the trophy around the Wimbledon complex after the win, which looks oddly like a normal office environment -- I think I saw people standing at a copier -- before she reaches a balcony where a cheering crowd awaits.
At the end the TV broadcast of the women's final, after 5-10 minutes of the anchors doing some final vamping, the last thing NBC showed was Bartoli alone, crossing a bridge over exiting fans and still carrying the trophy around to show people.
posted by rcade at 10:14 AM on August 15, 2013
I think this might be a hasty decision, and one that she'll reverse in a year or so after giving her body some time to recover.
It's real hard for some athletes to give up competition that early in their lives (she's only 28). Martina Hingis "retired" at age 22, and then came back later (and retired again, and now plays on the "legends" tour).