Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli shockingly retired after a first round loss to Simona Halep in Cincinnati. The 28-year-old Frenchwoman had said just last week in Toronto that she was emotionally and physically exhausted after her maiden Grand Slam run, which is why she pulled out of tournaments at Stanford and Carlsbad. She retired in her second match in Toronto last week and said that doctors told her she might be suffering from “an excess of tiredness and exhaustion on my body ..Everything that happened for me since a month, it’s not without any tiredness, and obviously it took me so much energy to win my first Grand Slam that at some point I will have a kind of low, and it’s normal. I’m human. At the end of the day I can’t be winning after winning after winning without feeling at some point a kind of exhaustion.”
On Wednesday in Cincinnati, Bartoli said that she does not want to deal with the physical pain of competing further.
“My body just can’t do it anymore,’” she said. “ 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. I really felt I gave all the energy I have left inside my body. I made my dream a reality and it will stay forever with me, but now my body just can’t cope with everything. I have pain everywhere after 45 minutes or an hour of play. I’ve been doing this for so long. And, yeah, it’s just body‑wise I just can’t do it anymore.”
Bartoli said that she has been thinking about whether she wanted to continue since Wimbledon
‘When you dreamed about something for so long and you have been on the tour for many, many, many years and you have been through up and downs and high and lows and already a lot of injuries since the beginning of the year, my body was really starting to fall apart, and I was able to keep it together, go through the pain with a lot of pain throughout this Wimbledon, and make it happen. That was probably the last little bit of something that was left inside me. It’s fine. I mean, I have the right to do something else as well. I’ve been playing for a long, long time, and it’s time for me now. It is.”
Bartoli said that she informed her father Walter of her decision. He had coached her for the vast majority of her career up until the start of 2013.
“He kind of felt it,” she said. “ It’s something that you live and you feel. I called him after the match and said, ‘You know what, dad, I think it’s my last one. And he said, ‘I kind of felt it. I kind of knew it somehow. I can see it in your eyes and see your body and see ‑‑ and know all the work you have done to make it happen. I’m so proud of you. I will support you in anything you’re doing.’ So of course it’s a hard decision to take, but I don’t think there should be a time or should be a match or should be something when you can say you have the right to retire and not the right to retire. I mean, at the end of the day, I’m the only one who has been doing what I did for 22 years.
Bartoli added that she is excited to have the chance to eventually start a family.
“There is a lot of excitement as a woman. There is a lot of excitement as a wife. There is a lot of excitement as a mother. There is a lot of excitement to come up.”
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