France’s first-ever woman to win gold in swimming Laure Manaudou has been named the first French athlete to receive the 2024 Paris Olympic Torch for the torch relay.
Manaudou will receive the torch from Stefanos Douskos, a Greek Olympian, on Greek soil. The torch will first be lit following tradition in Olympia, Greece before taking part in a 70-80 day torch relay.
Roughly 11,000 total runners will help with the relay. The relay costs about $450,000 per day. The total relay cost will be around $30-35 million.
The relay will travel through 700 cities as well as about 60 regions in France. The relay is planned to reach French soil on May 8, 2024 in Marseille, a city on the Balearic Sea in Southern France. See the design of the torch that was released last July here.
Manaudou became the first French woman to ever win gold in swimming as she won the 400 freestyle at the 2004 Athens Olympics. That was one of three medals for Manaudou in Athens as she also won silver in the 800 free and bronze in the 100 backstroke.
Two years later, Manaudou went on to set the World Record in the LCM 400 free swimming a 4:02.13 at the 2006 European Championships. In 2007, at LCM Worlds, she swam a World Record in the LCM 200 free swimming a 1:55.52.
Manaudou also swam the 2008 Summer Olympics where she went on to finish 8th in the 400 freestyle. A year later, in 2009, she announced her retirement from competitive swimming. She then made a comeback in 2010 returning to practice then and competition in 2011. She swam at her third Olympics in 2012 swimming in prelims of the 100 back, 200 back, and 4×100 medley relay.
Laure Manaudou is the older sister to fellow-French Olympian Florent Manaudou. Florent won gold in the 50 freestyle at the 2012 London Olympics and won silver in the event in both the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Games. Both Laure and Florent are two of the four captains of the torch relay, alongside Mona Francis (triathlon) and Dimitri Pavadé (track and field)
The goat’s sister
I hope the Swimswam photo curse does not affect the Seine for the Olympic triathlon.
I understood that reference!
Like Ian Thorpe, she didn’t fully realize her incredible potential as great as their career was.
Thorpe didn’t???
He didn’t.
Thorpe never had quality coaches. His first coach was just an accident and didn’t have any other good swimmer aside from Thorpe. His second coach had never trained any swimmer ever, Thorpe was her first swimmer.
Not to mention that Thorpe retired after Athens 2004 when he was only 22 yo, when he was dealing with inner turmoils.
Had he been coached by real quality coaches like Bowman, Boxall, Bohl, D. Talbot, Troy, etc and had inner peace, he’d have achieved a greater career.
As a reminder, this is a swimmer who swam 3:41 400 free (WR) and 1:46 200 free (WR) in BRIEFS at the age of 16 yo.
He had one of the greatest careers in swimming history. 13 individual WRs, a number of legendary relay performances, 5 Olympic gold, 6 WC gold at Fukuoka 2001. What more do you think he could have achieved?
More WC gold, more Olympic gold, more WRs.
He was at least as talented as Phelps.
Phelps retired at the age of 28 (London), Thorpe retired at the age of 22 (Athens).
Thorpe retired in 2007 after his doping suspected:
https://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics-2021-ian-thorpe-2007-scandal-back-spotlight-221900402.html
She revolutionized the 400 as we know it. She was taking it out in 1:58, which at the time was faster than winning times in the 200 at US Nationals. She was also the second woman ever under 1:00 in the 100 back despite having no underwaters and horrible streamlines. It’s sad that her career ended the way it did. I maintain that if she wanted to, she could have won an Olympic medal in any freestyle event from the 100 to the 1500, plus both backstrokes. We can thank Luca Marin and Federica Pellegrini for ending all that.
This happened yesterday…the flame is on its way already!