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As she stepped up onto the podium at the Parc des Princes, hand-in-hand with teammates half her age, Marta, the captain of Brazil, looked out across the pitch and, with a deep breath, smiled.
The corners of her eyes crinkled, her muscles aching, her dark hair glinting with threads of grey. The 38-year-old must have been thinking about everything that had led up to this moment, perhaps her final moment, for this team she has come to define.
But the only clues to that past, of that life lived, of those battles fought and won, were etched in her face. Standing there, the last of a generation of pioneers, Brazil's greatest ever player didn't say a word.
Marta was born in an impoverished region in north-east Brazil in 1986, just five years after the country's total ban on women playing football was lifted.
She was one of four children, raised by a single mother, and from an early age, football was her golden place: the place where she could be herself and carve out the life she wanted to live. The life she wanted all Brazilian women to live.
It wasn't easy in the early days. She couldn't find boots that fit her, so stuffed clumps of newspaper into the toes of hand-me-downs. She had no grass to train on; only the dirt roads of her tiny town. The only teams available were boys' teams, and she was constantly harassed and abused for being their only girl.
When she was 14, Marta hopped on a bus and travelled for three days, with little more than a bag of clothes and a dream, to Rio de Janeiro.
She'd heard about a trial for a women's team at Vasco da Gama, a club that had had a men's team for over a century at that point, but which had one of the first women's programs in the country.
When she arrived, she was desperately nervous, and stayed dead silent. She was nicknamed "bicho do mato": the shy one. But she never needed to say anything. She knew her football could do all the talking.
Within three years, Marta would go from a nobody with newspapers in her boots to one of the stars of the international game. She burst onto the scene with Brazil for the first time at the Under-19 Women's World Cup in 2002 alongside another future icon of the sport — Canada's Christine Sinclair — winning the Silver Ball as she helped her country to a fourth-placed finish.
The following year, she was part of the Brazil side that reached the knockouts of the senior World Cup, scoring three goals before losing to Sweden in the quarter-final.
Once the world recognised her gifts, her otherworldly talent with a ball at her feet, her nickname quickly changed from "bicho do mato" to "Pelé in skirts", comparing her to that other legend of Brazilian football.
She became the first woman to have her toes imprinted in the cement outside the Maracana stadium, the country's footballing cathedral: a forever mark on the place where it all began.
Between 2004 and 2012, the fleet-footed, audacious striker would write her name in the history books. She helped Brazil to two back-to-back silver Olympic medals in 2004 and 2008, as well as reaching a first ever World Cup final in 2007: a tournament in which the 21-year-old won the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball, as well as the goal of the tournament for an unforgettable solo run and flick-to-self strike against the USA.
The individual accolades poured in. She won FIFA's Player of the Year award five times in a row, and was voted in the top three for even longer. Her move to Tyreso in Sweden was met with enormous fanfare, as was her arrival at the Orlando Pride in the USA's National Women's Soccer League, where she continues her club career today.
But there has always been a quiet sadness to Marta's career. Despite her generational talent, her incredible records, and the impact of her inspirational football on the world, her home nation has taken far too long to catch up and make something lasting of the legacy she has single-handedly created.
"Football is a religion here, but this country has not been there for Marta," her long-time agent Fabio Farah said during the 2015 World Cup.
"She'd never be recognised as one of the best players in the world if she had stayed in Brazil.
"Who's the most awarded football player in the world? It's a woman. But that answer is a bit awkward in Brazil."
In 2019, when she thought she was on the verge of international retirement, Marta delivered a passionate speech following their elimination from the World Cup in which she issued a rallying-cry to the next generation of Brazilian players to carry the torch she was passing on to them.
She used what was maybe her final moment in the sun to shine a light on those around her; to try to make the game better for whoever came afterwards.
"It's wanting more," she said.
"It's training more. It's taking care of yourself more. It's being ready to play 90 minutes plus 30 minutes.
"This is what I ask of the girls. There's not gong to be a Formiga forever. There's not going to be a Marta forever. There's not going to be a Cristiane. The women's game depends on you to survive
"So think about that. Value it more. Cry in the beginning so you can smile in the end."
In Paris on Sunday morning, that smile was there. As she leaned down to receive her silver medal, the crowd roared when her name was announced over the loud-speaker.
She stood alongside a whole new generation of Brazilians, who fought their way to their first Olympic final since 2008, when Marta was still young but already at the top of the world.
They'd gotten through two knock-out games without her, overcoming the hosts France and world champions Spain, as the veteran watched over them from the stands, sitting out due to a suspension for a straight red card that threatened to end her career on the worst possible note.
But they refused to let her fade away so easily. Brazil's emerging stars got to the gold medal match against the USA for her, pointing and cheering up at her waving and crying on the balcony after every shock result.
They got here to give her one last shot at the glories she had always wanted for the rest of them.
"How are they going to replace her ... ever?" one commentator asks as Marta gazes down at the heavy medal around her neck.
"Well, you know what is so beautiful?" his colleague responds. "She's already speaking about her legacy. She's retiring at the end of this year; this could be her last game for Brazil.
"She bows out, in terms of major tournaments and accolades, with three Olympic silver medals, three Copa America titles, and a runners-up at the World Cup in 2007.
"But she has spoken about passing on this legacy: 'We have a really qualified team,' she says, 'with really talented girls. Because of this, I feel very comfortable saying: listen, I'm passing onto you. I'm going to pass on the baton. And you continue carrying on this legacy'.
"And the legacy that Marta has left in women's football — in football in general across the world — is unparalleled, and I'm not sure it will ever be matched.
"She is, quite simply, one of the greatest pioneers the game has ever seen."
Over a 24-year career, Marta, alongside many other pioneering players, has swept the women's game up onto her shoulders and carried it forward into its next era.
That she played her last Olympic game against a rejuvenated USA side, spear-headed by a trident of young attackers, all of whom she has watched flourish in the NWSL, while playing alongside some of her own Brazilian teammates who weren't even born when she debuted for the team, is a particularly fitting way to end this magnificent journey.
As the ceremony winds down, Marta, with her crinkled eyes and silver-streaked hair, turns to her teammates, who have burst into tears, and puts her wide arms around their shoulders.
She smiles, saying nothing, keeping them wrapped up in her embrace. And there they will always remain.
From a kid with newspapers in her shoes to a six-time Olympian, three-time medallist, World Cup all-time record goal-scorer, six-time Player of the Year, and a single source of inspiration for an entire country, there are, in true Marta fashion, few words to describe the legacy that she has left.
But her impact can be found everywhere. Thousands of kilometres away, at the entrance to Dois Riachos in north-east Brazil, a sign stretches across the highway that reads:
BEM VINDO A DOIS RIACHOS
TERRA DA JOGADORA MARTA
"Welcome to two streams: land of the player Marta."
On the roadside is a pillar with her photo, under which is the inscription: A melhor jogadora de futebol do Mundo.
"The best soccer player in the world."