KEY POINTS:
If you listened carefully this week, when Georgina Evers-Swindell explained why she and her sister Caroline were ending their illustrious rowing careers, there was just a hint of never say never.
It might be, she said, that after a decent break the competitive juices may start flowing again, possibly in time to be one of the stellar attractions at the 2010 world championships on their home track at Lake Karapiro.
She didn't sound massively convinced and here's hoping they don't.
Comparisons have been made with Rob Waddell, who stopped rowing after winning his Olympic gold medal at Sydney eight years ago only to return last season, win two World Cup titles with Nathan Cohen and becoming strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, medal hopes in China.
But Waddell didn't stop sport for seven years. He joined Team New Zealand as a grinder, the most physically gruelling role on an America's Cup boat, and contested two Cup campaigns.
So while his body shape changed, when he decided to have a crack at Beijing, in purely physical terms he was in superb condition.
Successful rowing campaigns are not built on six months' leadup work, and the Evers-Swindells, who turned 30 yesterday - Georgina four minutes before Caroline - know what is required. They have been sitting one behind the other travelling backwards for the fat end of 15 years.
They said the decision to quit was reached separately. It's unlikely they were surprised at the outcome of their deliberations. Experts on the psychology of twins will have something to say on that.
When they told their coach Dick Tonks he tried to change their minds. But he knows they are single-minded people. It is, after all, one of the qualities which made them great.
It is possible they could return and regain their place at the top, and if they wanted to simply because they love rowing and are missing it, why not?
But from the other perspective, they can do no more. Their legacy is intact. Two Olympic gold medals, three world titles - not to forget three silvers - are compelling evidence of their achievements.
What they have done for their sport, particularly among young women, is substantial. Talk to up-and- comers, and you find more often than not the spur to get into a skiff came from watching the Hawkes Bay sisters.
How to compare their Olympic golds? Athens in 2004 was expected, if winning an Olympic title can ever be regarded as such. They'd won the previous two world champs; they were overwhelming favourites, and they delivered.
Two months before Beijing, few would have given tuppence for their chances of defending the crown after a wretched final World Cup regatta in Poland before the Games, when they were unable to even make the A final.
They contemplated packing it in. Instead they knuckled down and in what will go down as one of Olympic rowing's great finals, they pipped the Germans again by .01s.
Coach Tonks reckoned they had two more Olympic campaigns in them.
But enough is enough. Life holds other interests beyond the confines of a boat and the lanes of a regatta course.
They have been inspiring figures for young rowers and they've done what only Peter Snell, Mark Todd and Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald have in defending Olympic titles.
What made them so good? Tonks put it down to five elements: training ethos, mental capacity, very good technique, an extremely competitive nature on the water and courage.
For champions, courage includes recognising the right time to walk away.
