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Laure
Manaudou
Laure Manaudou in 2005 |
| Personal
information |
| Full name |
Laure Manaudou |
| Nationality |
 France |
| Stroke(s) |
Freestyle, backstroke |
| Date of birth |
9 October 1986 (1986-10-09)
(age 23) |
| Place of birth |
Villeurbanne, France |
| Height |
1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Weight |
64 kg (140 lb; 10.1 st) |
|
|
Laure Manaudou (born 9 October 1986 in Villeurbanne, Rhône) is a retired French Olympic,
world and European champion swimmer. She is the daughter of a
French father and a Dutch mother.
2004
Olympics
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
4×200 m 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.
2004 European Swimming
Championships
Laure Manadou has won three gold medals at the 2004 European
Swimming Championships in Madrid, Spain, for the 100 metre backstroke, 400
metre freestyle, and the 4×100 metre team medley races.
2005 World Swimming
Championships
On 24 July 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 12 May 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.
2006 European Swimming Championships and new 400 m freestyle world
record
On 12 May 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.
On 6 August 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).
2007 World Swimming Championships and new 200 m freestyle world
record
Manaudou broke the 200 m freestyle world record at the 2007
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.
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 struggling to keep up.
[4] 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.
Retirement
On 17 September 2009, at 22 years of age, Manaudou announced
through the newspaper Le Parisien her retirement from
competitive swimming.[5] She was
quoted as saying, "It came to me little by little. I didn’t make it
on impulse. It has matured slowly.”[6]
Personal
life
The weekly magazine Paris Match ran a cover story on
Manaudou in its 5-11 April 2007 issue.
From 2001-2007, Manaudou was coached by Philippe Lucas. She
competed for the Melun-Dammarie club until 2006, when she moved to
Canet-en-Roussillon.
On 9 May 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 6 August 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.[7]
Accomplishments
Career best
times
- 200 m freestyle: 1.55.52 (4th fastest swimmer ever)
- 400 m freestyle: 4:02.13 (4th fastest swimmer ever)
- 800 m freestyle: 8:18.80 (4th fastest swimmer ever)
- 100 m backstroke: 59.50 (6th fastest swimmer ever)
- 200 m backstroke: 2:06.64 (4th fastest swimmer ever)
References
External
links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Greece
Canada
Australia
Spain
Hungary
Netherlands
Petra
Schneider
Kate
Ziegler
Sachiko Yamada
Joanne Jackson
Federica
Pellegrini
Otylia
Jędrzejczak
Search