Sarah Michel-Boury (1.80 m, 35 years old), captain of the French team, played the last match of her international career. In tears, her best friend, Valériane Ayayi (1.83 m, 30 years old), paid tribute to her in front of the press after the final lost by a narrow point (66-67) against Team USA.
“I don’t know if I’ll be very objective. Sarah is my best friend so it’s hard to find words today because I’m going to lose my partner. She’s brought so much. She’s an incredible captain. She’s an even more incredible person. I think she hasn’t been, throughout her career, recognized enough for everything she’s done.
I know I will always have her in my life, but on the court, it’s… I think you’ve seen it, the public sees it more and more, but throughout her career, she hasn’t been recognized enough for everything she does, for basketball, for French basketball and for the person she is. So I think that’s a shame. And I would have liked to offer her something else so that she could at least finish her international career (with a gold medal).
But she’s really proud of us. That’s Sarah too. We’re here, we tell her “yeah sorry, sorry”. And she tells us “but you don’t realize”. Who would have told her when she started her career in Valenciennes that she would end her international career in France, in Paris, in front of her family, at the Olympic Games, on a podium with a medal, nobody.
So there you go, just that I love it.”
Like Valériane Ayayi, Marine Johannès made her statement about Sarah Michel-Boury:
“It was just special for us too to experience that with her. She really had a very, very great career. I think we are very, very, very, very happy to have been able to share that with her, to have had her as captain, it was pretty incredible. I know we can count on her, that she’s not going to go very far and that we’ll see her again, but she had a very, very great career and we’re very, very proud of her.”
