Fame is not always easy and can sometimes lead to traumatic situations, like the one Laure Manaudou experienced at the end of the 2000s. At the time, the champion, who turns 36 this Sunday, is living a nightmare: in full separation with the Italian swimmer Luca Marin, for whom she had dropped everything, she suddenly sees very intimate photos of her appearing on the Internetat the time exchanged with an ex.
Clichés she refuses to talk about at the moment but which she discusses in her autobiography Between the lines, released in 2014 and in which she rarely engages. Telling how she learned of the existence of these pictures on social networks, she is first of all flabbergasted. “Shortly before, at the edge of the warm-up pool, someone had come to warn me that photos of me were starting to circulate on the Internet. Not just any photos: particularly suggestive shots… I immediately understood. I was stunned, overwhelmed with shame“, she says, explaining that her big brother Nicolas, who was training her at the time, was very angry with her.
But in his head, the shame endures and continues to be difficult to live with today, especially since the ex-swimmer is the mother of three children (Manon, born in 2010 from her love affair with Fred Bousquet, and two little boys, born in 2017 and 2021 and from her marriage to Jérémy Frérot). In her book, she says that it is precisely her children that she wants to protect at all costs: “My only fear is that Manon will see them when she’s older. Everything else, the shame, the humiliation, the anger, it’s now part of my story“, she explains, adding that she had also thought “burning with shame“, to the reaction of his parents.
Fortunately, the images should never come out again, she made sure: “For years, I have paid a company that is responsible for erasing them from the Net as soon as they reappear. But regularly, idiots remind me of them, send them back to me on Twitter or put them back in circulation“, she admits in her book, revealing with sincerity that “in [s]we mind, everyone saw them“.”Every person I meet is likely to have watched them or is going to take a look. I have to deal with“, she admits mortified.
If we hope for her that this story has finally calmed down, the swimmer takes the opportunity to send an important message: be careful who you send this kind of intimate photos to! Grateful that she wouldn’t have believed”see these famous images reappear“, she admits indeed having thought, “when I broke up”, to the idea that he could use it against [elle]. But he hadn’t and I naively believed he never would.”. A sordid story, which she would rather forget…