Laure Manaudou (born October 9, 1986 in
Villeurbanne) is a French Olympic, World and
European champion swimmer. She is the daugther of a
French father and a Dutch mother.
Manaudou currently holds the world records for the
400 m freestyle (Short Course) and 200 m freestyle
(Long Course).
She won the gold medal in the women's 400 m
freestyle at the 2004 Athens Olympics. It was
France's first ever gold medal in women's swimming
and the first swimming gold medal won by a French
man or woman since Jean Boiteux's triumph in the 400
m men's freestyle event in Helsinki in 1952.
Manaudou won the silver medal in the women's 800 m
freestyle at the same Olympics. In that race, she
had a quick start but was passed down the stretch by
Ai Shibata from Japan. She took the bronze medal at
the women's 100 m backstroke, becoming only the
second Frenchwoman to win three medals in a single
Summer or Winter Olympic Games. The first was track
and field athlete Micheline Ostermeyer in London in
1948.
She 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.
She won three gold medals at the 2004 European
Swimming Championships in Madrid for the 100 m
backstroke, 400 m freestyle, and the 4×100 m team
medley.
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).
She broke the 200 m freestyle world record at the
World Swimming Championships in Melbourne in winning
the final. She also won the 400 m freestyle event,
obtained a silver for the 100 m backstroke and the
800 m freestyle, and a bronze for 4×200 m freestyle
relay. She was leading the race in the 800 m final
going into the last lap, but the American Kate
Ziegler finally overtook her in the last metres to
win by a margin of 28 cm. She was thus prevented
from becoming the first female swimmer to win the
200 m, 400 m and 800 m freestyle titles at the same
World Championships.
The Paris Match weekly magazine did a cover story of
Manaudou in its April 5-11 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 the World and Olympic
titlist 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).
She won 4 medals in the European Championships of
2007, even if the manifestation was characterized by
the continuous fights between her and her Italian
ex-boyfriend Luca Marin.
The same day, lewd pictures of Laure Manaudou
started to propagate on the Internet. Luca Marin
denied being the culprit.
