Laure Manaudou

While Britain’s girl-next-door, Rebecca Adlington, was swimming her way to two gold medals, immortality in the shape of a local Mansfield pub, and a (rather short) municipal pool both to be named after her, and a pair of golden Jimmy Choo designer shoes bought by the Council, one of her most fancied opponents from France had a nightmare Olympics.

The disappointing French performance in Beijing was personified by the complete collapse of their tall blond swimming star, Laure Manaudou, gold medal winner in the 400 metres freestyle at the 2004 Games. Manaudou finished eight seconds – more like the width of an ocean in swimming race times – behind Adlington in the 2008 final, finishing seventh. She fared no better in the final of the 100 metres backstroke, to conclude a terrible year. 

Manaudou, known as ‘la Sirène’ (‘the Mermaid’), recipient of the Légion d’Honneur and a host of lucrative endorsements, many exploiting her sex appeal, had a highly public poolside break-up with her boyfriend, Italian international swimmer Luca Marin, during the last European Championships in Budapest. When Marin demanded the return of his lavish friendship ring, Manaudou ostentatiously threw it into the pool.

Coincidence or not, the following day nude photographs of Manaudou that included the unmistakeable butterfly tattoo on her stomach were posted on the Internet, graphic images leaving nothing to the imagination, allegedly taken by Marin at the height of their passionate relationship. The finger of suspicion has now been pointed at her arch rival in and out of the pool, Italy’s Frederica Pellegrini, who denies releasing the pictures. Pellegrini began dating Marin publicly as soon as Laure had left his Turin apartment and returned to France. After having three different addresses and coaches in 18 months, and being forced to field question after question about the pictures on the Internet, she was in the worst possible mental state to compete in Beijing, where Signorina Pellegrini rubbed salt into the wound by breaking Manaudou’s world record in the 400 metre heats.

French television coverage of the Olympics was almost as intense as in the UK but after five days of competition France was still waiting for its first gold, with failures by fancied competitors in fencing, judo and canoeing as well as in swimming, thereby adding to the general public gloom. Small wonder that the Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (INSEE) recorded the 13th consecutive monthly fall in the French feel-good factor.

Britain’s tally of nineteen golds and fourth place in the medals table – France won seven golds and finished tenth – put the French sports minister Bernard Laporte under pressure. At a heated press conference he responded by saying France would not follow the UK in concentrating their resources on a ‘handful’ of sports in order to increase their medals total. Laporte seemed not to hear the British journalist present who pointed out that the UK’s 47 medals had been secured in 11 different sports.

From our September 2008 e-newsletter