France's Manaudou Seeks Gold After Months of Turmoil
Laure Manaudou in a training session.
BEIJING — So which Laure Manaudou will it be under the undulating, blue ceiling of the National Aquatics Center, more appropriately known as the Water Cube?
Will it be the Manaudou who, with plenty of that lovely French word "insouciance" won gold at the last Olympics in Athens and then matured into the finest female swimmer in the sport at last year's world championships in Melbourne?
Or will it be the reluctant, trapped-in-the-spotlight star who could find no way to accelerate on command in April at the French championships?
Manaudou has generated more questions than reassuring answers in the last 16 months as her life, already under intense scrutiny in her home country, has taken several soap operatic turns. There have been abrupt coaching and address changes, a tempestuous breakup with her Italian boyfriend, Luca Marin, graphic nude photographs published on the Internet against Manaudou's will and a fresh start in the peaceful French city of Mulhouse.
Along the way, she failed to qualify in the Olympics for the 200-meter freestyle, an event in which she still holds the world record. But she did qualify in the 400 freestyle, the event she won in Athens, and in the 100 and 200 backstrokes.
Her busy Olympics was to start on Sunday night in Beijing with the heats in the 400 freestyle and 100 backstroke. As she spoke last week at a news conference, the emphasis was on managing expectations, not increasing them.
"My support team has told me that in any case, no matter what happens here, I will always have the result that I did in Athens, that those can't be taken away from me and that whatever I do here will be a bonus," she said. "After that, if all goes well, all the better. If it doesn't go well, fine, it's not the end of the world. It's not life or death either. It's sport, and we can't always be the best. I hope to be, but we'll see what happens."
The five medals Manaudou won at last year's world championships look like too much to ask from a young woman whose spirits had sunk low enough this year that she considered quitting.
The mood swing began in April 2007, when she and her longtime, hard-driving coach Philippe Lucas split on acrimonious terms because of Manaudou's desire for a different tone and a way to be closer to her boyfriend Marin, the Italian swimmer.
The following month, she left for Turin to train with an Italian team, but neither that arrangement nor her relationship with Marin ended amicably. Manaudou was soon back in France and soon having to cope with the unauthorized publication of nude photos of herself on the Web (Marin denied any involvement).
After training last year under the tutelage of her brother Nicolas, she later joined Nicolas Horter in Mulhouse. Meanwhile, Marin is now dating a fellow Italian, Federica Pellegrini, one of Manaudou's longtime rivals in the freestyle who ended up breaking Manaudou's record in the 400 this year.
Pellegrini and Katie Hoff, not the defending Olympic champion Manaudou, were the favorites as the 400 began on Sunday.
"In a way, it's pleasant," Manaudou said. "It's more straightforward. The woman to beat, the woman to follow, is Federica, now that she has the record. The most difficult thing is to get into the final."
Manaudou, like many of the Europeans, is no fan of the decision to hold the finals in the morning in Beijing to accommodate the prime-time desires of NBC.
"It's not a big issue anymore," her teammate Céline Coderc said. "But it's true that we were all quite disappointed that media concerns took precedence over the athletes' concerns. I think that's the prevailing sentiment among the swimmers. But we're still going to give our best, and it's not this time change that's going to stop us."
The move puts the finals in the middle of the night for European television audiences. "Everybody will be in front of the TV at home, whether it's 4 a.m. or not," Coderc said.
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