In the documentary Laura! Laura! Laura! broadcast this Sunday, January 19 on Canal+, Laure Manaudou looked back on her career and the over-media coverage that followed. She notably addressed the publication of her intimate photos in 2007.
In Laura! Laura! Laura! broadcast this Sunday, January 19 on Canal+, Laure Manaudou retraces the course of her career and the trying consequences that her media coverage has brought. The greatest French swimmer in history testifies on camera, just like her brothers Florent and Nicolas and her parents Olga and Jean-Luc. From his first exploits filmed on camcorder to his last competition, this thrilling documentary looks back on the life of this sportswoman so adored by the French that the constant pressure from the press turned her life upside down. Her relationship on the front page of magazines, her breakup with her trainer Philippe Lucas, the disclosure of her intimate photos on the Internet… The champion talks about how she sometimes lost control.
“I remember shaming my family“: Laure Manaudou talks about the publication of her intimate photos on the web
During the European Short Course Championships in 2007, Laure Manaudou faced a terrible personal ordeal: the distribution of her intimate photos on the Internet. Didier Poulmaire, lawyer and former advisor to the swimmer, explains that “it’s a new tsunami that falls on her“For her part, the sportswoman looks back on this period with great honesty.”I remember shaming my family. As luck would have it, it comes out just as I’m leaving Italian [Luca Marin, NDLR] except that it was not the Italian who was in possession of these photos. I was kind of in a relationship where it was ‘you send a picture and if you don’t send it, I’ll leave you’. I did it, the next day I told myself that I was stuck, that I was going to have to stay with this guy all my life. Otherwise, the more the days passed, the more photos he had.“, she remembers.
-“Everyone had seen these photos“: Laure Manaudou still receives insults today after the broadcast of her intimate photos in 2007
Subsequently, Laure Manaudou traces the thread of this spiral around her. “Every day he told me to send him a photo otherwise he would put it all on the Internet. I told myself that I had to until the day I decided to leave this person but I take the risk that all these photos are on the Internet. They went out a year after breaking up with this person. It was horrible for me because it didn’t really exist. It was like rape. Everyone had seen these photos, it was the beginning of social networks. I received them 15,000 times a day. ‘You’re a slut, you’re a whore.’ It still happens a little today. It was very, very complicated to manage. It stayed in my head for a long time, the feeling of not going out, hiding. And then, once you’ve experienced this thing, you have to accept it. I’m not going to stay locked up all my life“, she smiles to conclude.
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