At 36, whom she celebrates this Sunday, October 9, Laure Manaudou is an accomplished woman and mother. Happy in her little paradise in the Bassin d’Arcachon with her husband, the singer Jérémy Frérot, and her three children, Manon, 12, Lou, 5, and a last little boy whose first name has never been revealed, aged 20 months, the champion is well in her sneakers and seems fulfilled in his rare television appearances.
But this has not always been the case : became famous very young, at less than 18 years old when she had won the Olympic gold medal in Athens, the swimmer went through difficult phases. And in particular four years later, when she finished the Beijing Games without any medalshumiliated by the press after a tumultuous year marked by a departure to Italy with her boyfriend Luca Marin.
You look like you have more chest than before
The young woman, who then wanted to change, decided to get breast prostheses… without telling anyone! “As a kid, I did it on the sly from my parents. When I went back to see them in Ambérieu, a few days after the operation, I didn’t tell anyone.“, she said in her autobiography Between the lines in 2014. “My mother looked at me with a frownshe said to me ‘Here, it’s weird, it looks like you have more breasts than before’. […] I finally recognized the truth. I showed her the result which she found very pretty“.
An act that she ended up regretting two years later, when she returned to competition. Her body, which hasn’t swum for a long time and experienced a pregnancy, no longer follows and her prostheses handicap her more than anything else. She therefore decides to part with it: “Before leaving Marseille, I had my breast implants removed. Impossible to keep them if I want to resume training and competition: the wetsuits are too tight. To withdraw them is also to show my determination, to prove to myself and to others that I am back for good. Mentally, its important to me“.
Today, with hindsight, it is a decision that the former sportswoman does not regret, assuming that it changed the image she had of herself. “I wanted to be a woman and let it show“, she explained in her book, before confirming it a few months later in Paris Match : “This operation allowed me to be better in my skin, to be able to put on necklines and to feel more like a woman!“All this while acknowledging all the same that”for an athlete it was not ideal“.