Laure Manaudou
(born October 9, 1986 in Villeurbanne) is a French Olympic, world and
European champion swimmer.
She is the daughter of a French father and a
Dutch mother.
Career Manaudou
currently holds the world records for the 400 meter freestyle (short
course), but she has lost her "long course" record, which is set in 50
meter pools. She won the gold medal in the women's 400 meter freestyle
at the 2004 Athens Olympics. It was France's first gold medal ever in
women's swimming and the first swimming gold medal won by a French
athlete since Jean Boiteux's victory in the 400 meter men's freestyle
event at Helsinki in 1952. Manaudou won the silver medal in the women's
800 meter freestyle at the Athens Olympics. In that race, she had a
quick start but was passed down the stretch by Ai Shibata of Japan. She
also won the bronze medal in the women's 100 meter backstroke, becoming
only the second Frenchwoman to win three medals in a single Olympic
Games, Summer or Winter. The first one was the track and field athlete
Micheline Ostermeyer in London in 1948. Manaudou was by far the best
swimmer on the French team, and did not have the team support to win a
medal in the women's 4 x 200m freestyle relay.
Manaudou is
currently tied for second (three medals altogether) on the all-time
list of French multiple female Winter or Summer Olympic medal winners
along with Micheline Ostermeyer, Marielle Goitschel, Pascale
Trinquet-Hachin, Perrine Pelen, Anne Briand-Bouthiaux, Marie-José
Pérec, Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli and Félicia Ballanger. The all-time
leader is the fencer Laura Flessel-Colovic, who has five Olympic medals.
Manaudou
won three gold medals at the 2004 European Swimming Championships in
Madrid, Spain, for the 100 meter backstroke, 400 meter freestyle, and
the 4×100 meter team medley races.
On July 24, 2005 at the 2005
World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, Canada Manaudou won the
women's 400 m freestyle. Manaudou was under world record pace for the
first half of the race. In the second half of the race, Manaudou was
challenged by Shibata, her rival from the Olympics. Pundits were
already predicting that Manaudou would eventually eclipse the
world-record mark in the 400 m freestyle set by Janet Evans at the 1988
Summer Olympics. This would happen on May 12, 2006, as she broke
Evans's world record of 4:03.85 during the final of the French
championship in Tours with the time of 4:03.03.
On August 6,
2006, on the final day of the 2006 European Swimming Championships in
Budapest, she broke her own world record with a time of 4:02:13 in
winning the 400 m freestyle title. She also won the 800 m freestyle (in
European record time), 200 m individual medley and 100 m backstroke
titles. In addition, she obtained the bronze medal in the 200 m
freestyle, 4×200 m team freestyle and 4×100 m team medley. With her
four titles, she equalled the record of the number of individual titles
won in the same European swimming championships held by East Germany's
Ute Geweniger (1981) and Hungary's Krisztina Egerszegi (1993).
On
May 12, 2006, Manaudou broke Janet Evans's world record in the women's
400 meter freestyle swim that had stood for 18 years. Manaudou then
held the same world record for nearly two years.
The weekly magazine Paris Match ran a cover story on Manaudou in its April 5-11, 2007 issue.
From
2001-2007, Manaudou was coached by Philippe Lucas. She competed for the
Melun-Dammarie club until 2006, when she moved to Le Canet en
Roussillon.
On May 9, 2007, she announced at a press conference
at the Canet en Roussillon swim club that she was leaving her coach
Philippe Lucas to move to Italy and to train with the club Lapresse
Nuoto, located in Turin. She added, however, that she would continue to
swim for France.
On August 6 it was reported that Manaudou had
been removed from her Italian-based team. The split is said to have
been triggered by a fallout between Manaudou and LaPresse Nuoto club
chief executive Paolo Penso. Penso is believed to have questioned
Manaudou's attitude to training (Reuters/L'Equipe).
Manaudou won
four medals in the European Championships of 2007, despite reported
conflicts between her and Luca Marin, her Italian ex-boyfriend.
The same day, lewd pictures of Laure Manaudou started to propagate on the Internet. Marin denied being the culprit.
2008 Olympics In
the 2008 Summer Olympics, Manaudou was unable to recapture her form
from the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. After starting strong and
holding the lead at the 200-meter mark, she finished last (eighth) in
the 400 m freestyle final with a finishing time of 4:11.26. After the
defeat Manaudou admitted giving up during the race after stuggling to
keep up. She then finished seventh in the 100 m backstroke final. In
her final hope for a medal, in the 200 m backstroke, she finished last
in her semifinal heat and was eliminated.