In the Manaudou family, you know Florent, Laure … but maybe less Nicolas.
Florent Manaudou pays tribute to his family this Friday, February 21, in the program Dance with stars. The swimmer, a medalist at the last Paris Olympics, decided to devote a dance, with his partner Elsa Bois, to the siblings Manaudou. Because if Florent and Laure are the best known in the family, the other brother, Nicolas, has been decisive in the career of the Olympic champion of the 50 m freestyle in London.
Nicolas Manaudou was born on October 9, 1985 in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, he is therefore the big brother of Laure and Florent (for the anecdote, Laure was born the same day as Nicolas, a year later). Nicolas Manaudou is the one who has the strongest character and that quickly imposes himself as a leader. He became coach of the “Ambérieu swimming” club in Ambérieu-en-Bugey, in Ain, from the age of 19. After the end of the collaboration between Philippe Lucas and Laure Manaudou, the Italian episode and the tensions with his trainer, it is Nicolas who will train his sister from September 2007 to January 2008 in order to prepare the Beijing Games.
Some tensions in siblings …
But it was especially with his brother that Nicolas Manaudou’s coach’s performance was the best. Under his leadership, in 2007, Florent Manaudou became champion of France cadets of the 50 meter freestyle. In 2011, he qualified for the Shanghai World Championships, where he finished 5th. This is the end of the collaboration with his brother since the same year, he left the Ain and left to train with Romain Barnier at the Cercle des Nageurs de Marseille and is crowned Olympic champion of the 50 meter freestyle at the London Olympic Games.
The successive departures of the two swimmers left a point of bitterness to the big brother and caused some tensions. “I trained him for six years. If I had not been there, he would have stopped swimming at 15 years old and still at 19, he would have been fired from a pole,” Nicolas at the JDD said there A few years old. “My role was to set it up to his first world championships (2011). I had not taken well at the time that he left me just before for Marseille. With hindsight, I tell myself that I I did my work as a trainer.
“I would still like to thank my big brother, our big brother, because it was he who trained us at crucial moments of our life, when we were not well, where we wanted to stop, we wanted to abandon, “said Laure Manaudou recalling during a program before the Olympic Games broadcast on France 2.” It was he who took us under his wing and it is true that without him, we do not would not be there today, “she said. “We tend to forget it, it is he who is in the shadows and it is also thanks to him all his medals.” Dissipated tensions, therefore, and a common tattoo, symbol of their links, was even done by the three …