LONDON—Their careers over, a long and complicated journey done, Annie Martin and Marie-Andree Lessard were asked to pose for a photo in the interview area of the beach volleyball venue at the Olympics on Thursday.
Of course they obliged but it took a second for the picture happen.
Martin still had a few tears to shed.
In an emotional goodbye to a sport that’s dominated their lives for almost two decades, Martin and Lessard bowed out of the Olympics with a 21-12, 22-24, 15-8 loss to world No. 6 Italy and are now ready for the next stage of their lives.
“I’m sorry,” Martin, 30, a two-time Olympian, said as the first wave of emotion passed over her.
“There’s a lot of emotion because it’s our last tournament and volleyball brought so many things to me, like from the inside.”
Martin and Lessard did not win a match here, going 0-3 in the preliminary-round, losing to the host Brits, Russia in a delightful three-set match and to Italy after staving off five match points in the second set.
But they have said all along it is as much the journey as the results that drive them.
“It was not easy for sure, there were a lot of tough life lessons through it all,” said Lessard, 34. “It’s a journey that’s been filled with lots of obstacles. Just the fact that we made it here was everything coming together at the right time.
“Making the choices and the values and the way we’ve decided to compete and the way we’ve decided to approach the sport, it was a valid choice to stick to it, even when everyone was not agreeing necessarily with it.”
Lessard had funded most of this season with prize money she won on a sports-related television reality show in Quebec. Both the women had been injured seriously during the past couple of years and they only got the Canadian berth here in early July after a North American qualification event in Mexico and Canadian trials in Toronto.
The process was long and difficult, much more so than the first time Martin made it to the Games, in Athens in 2004
“When I went to Athens . . . I was very young and the thing went very fast in two years we qualified for the Olympics, I had just started on the world tour. It was like a magic moment.
“In a certain way both were tough but this was tougher. I was older, you have expectations and you want so much and we had injuries and so much stuff happened. The fact that we are here in London, it’s amazing.”
There will be no more volleyball — “maybe we’ll play in a campground or something,” Lessard joked — but big plans await.
“We’ll cherish every moment of this Olympic experience until the end, take a break and then we’ll see what comes up, what’s the next inspiration, how can we serve this place and make this place a better world,” said Lessard.
Of course they obliged but it took a second for the picture happen.
Martin still had a few tears to shed.
In an emotional goodbye to a sport that’s dominated their lives for almost two decades, Martin and Lessard bowed out of the Olympics with a 21-12, 22-24, 15-8 loss to world No. 6 Italy and are now ready for the next stage of their lives.
“I’m sorry,” Martin, 30, a two-time Olympian, said as the first wave of emotion passed over her.
“There’s a lot of emotion because it’s our last tournament and volleyball brought so many things to me, like from the inside.”
Martin and Lessard did not win a match here, going 0-3 in the preliminary-round, losing to the host Brits, Russia in a delightful three-set match and to Italy after staving off five match points in the second set.
But they have said all along it is as much the journey as the results that drive them.
“It was not easy for sure, there were a lot of tough life lessons through it all,” said Lessard, 34. “It’s a journey that’s been filled with lots of obstacles. Just the fact that we made it here was everything coming together at the right time.
“Making the choices and the values and the way we’ve decided to compete and the way we’ve decided to approach the sport, it was a valid choice to stick to it, even when everyone was not agreeing necessarily with it.”
Lessard had funded most of this season with prize money she won on a sports-related television reality show in Quebec. Both the women had been injured seriously during the past couple of years and they only got the Canadian berth here in early July after a North American qualification event in Mexico and Canadian trials in Toronto.
The process was long and difficult, much more so than the first time Martin made it to the Games, in Athens in 2004
“When I went to Athens . . . I was very young and the thing went very fast in two years we qualified for the Olympics, I had just started on the world tour. It was like a magic moment.
“In a certain way both were tough but this was tougher. I was older, you have expectations and you want so much and we had injuries and so much stuff happened. The fact that we are here in London, it’s amazing.”
There will be no more volleyball — “maybe we’ll play in a campground or something,” Lessard joked — but big plans await.
“We’ll cherish every moment of this Olympic experience until the end, take a break and then we’ll see what comes up, what’s the next inspiration, how can we serve this place and make this place a better world,” said Lessard.
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