Laure Manaudou, the 2004 Olympic champion whose success in the pool took a dive when she left coach Philippe Lucas after Melbourne 2007 world titles, has called time on her career - at least for the 2008-2009 season.

The swimmer announced in France this morning that she will not race again this year and is taking time out to consider her future. The 22-year-old's agent and lawyer, Didier Poulmaire, has just issued the following statement: "Laure Manaudou has decided to call a halt to her 2008-2009 season and take a break from training as an elite athlete. She will therefore not compete at forthcoming competitions, domestic or international, in the 2008-2009 season."

 Her decision - which relieves her of the need to race in what for her must seem like a Lion's Den, Rome 2009, given her recent history with a boyfriend, a break-up and a rival who took the former love and made him her fiancee - was based on two decision: "The first is that Laure has reached a point of saturation that has deprived her of the pleasure and will to swim."

With a nod to "one of the most celebrated careers in world swimming", the statement added that Manaudou had "proved herself capable of summoning physical and mental strengths fir to achieve the highest level of performance. Laure has been training for 10 years, of which six were spent at the highest level in the world, without a break".

The statement continued: "The second reason is that Laure is suffering again from pain in her shoulder and migraines which interrupt her training."

When she won the 400m freestyle crown at the 2004 Games in Athens, Manaudou became the first French woman ever to win a gold medal in the Olympic pool.

"The decision to take a break was not easy because Laure retains her passion for swimming and is a competitor in her soul. She made her decision calmly together with her family and professional circle, particularly with the officials at Cercle des Nageurs de Marseille and her coach Romain Barnier, as well as her sponsors who have been with her for the long-term and now offer full support for her decision."

Manaudou's sponsorship deals have run to seven figures in euros. She has not retired, remains a member of the Marseilles club and will continue to make herself available to anti-doping testers in keeping with international rules that govern swimming.

The final chapter in the aquatic career of Manaudou may yet unfold beyond 2009, but some things can never be taken away: the first Frenchwoman to win an Olympic swimming title, the fastest middle-distance freestyler of the past 100 years will go down in history as the swimmer who called time on legends Janet Evans (USA) and Tracey Wickham (AUS) over 400m freestyle. 

In May 2006, the clock stopped at 17 years and 231 days for Evans’s 4:03.85 world record when Manaudou swam 4:03.03 (before cutting that to 4:02.13 in August the same year), and then in March 2007, Wickham’s 4:06.28 World Championship record was replaced by a 4:02.61 after 28 years and 213 days.

But for Federica Pellegrini (ITA), Manaudou’s name would also have been linked to ending the 13-year world-record reign of Franziska van Almsick (GER) in the 200m freestyle: Pellegrini shaved 0.17sec off the global mark, with a 1:56.47 in the semi-final, before taking bronze in 1:56.97 behind a new world, in which Manaudou clocked 1:55.52, and Annika Lurz (GER) 1:55.68.

The daughter of a Dutch mother and French father, Manaudou was born in Villeurbanne nine months before Evans set her first world record. In spring 2003, a year after leaving her parents to live in the family home of coach Philippe Lucas, 16-year-old Manaudou made a big breakthrough when she clocked 4:10.68 over 400m, and in December that year won her first senior medal, a bronze in the 100m backstroke at the European Short-Course Championships.

In April 2004, the most famous citizen of Ambérieu-en-Bugey, Ain, started to roll towards the Olympic crown with a 4:08.72 over 400m to lift the French national title at Dunkirk. Two months on, she lifted her first international senior prizes, winning the European crown over 400m in 4:07.90 and the 100m backstroke, in 1:00.93. In Athens, Manaudou cruised into lane four in the final, in 4:06.67. Her 4:05.34 victory, 0.50sec ahead of 200m butterfly champion Otylia Jedrzejczak (POL), shaved 0.50sec off the European record that had stood to Anke Moehring (p199) since 1989, and made her the first French swimmer to claim an Olympic title since Jean Boiteux (FRA) in 1952. The following day she took bronze in the 100m backstroke behind Natalie Coughlin (USA) and Kirsty Coventry (ZIM), and four days later she raced at the helm of the 800m freestyle final for 650m before Ai Shibata (JPN) caught her and won the battle for the wall, 8:24.54 to 8:24.96. Thus ended the finest French performance ever in the Olympic pool; with one medal of each colour.

At the World Championships in Montreal in 2005, Manaudou scraped into the final of the 400m in 4:11.46, and then claiming her first world title in 4:06.44, 0.30sec up on Ai Shibata (JPN). Lucas was unhappy and after a period of intense work, Manaudou emerged as a greater force: on May 12, at Tours, she eclipsed Evans’s 400m record. An even bigger moment followed in August, when Manaudou clocked 4:02.13 in the midst of a European Championships in Budapest that saw her visit the podium seven times in seven days: 200m (silver), 400m, 800m freestyle, 100m backstroke, 200m medley (all gold) and two medal-winning relays.

“I'm not difficult, I'm very difficult! I moan all the time in training...but I work hard. I want them [my rivals] to fear me on the blocks, to think all is lost before the race; that it's not worth it. I don't want to accept defeat,” said Manaudou on the eve of the championships in Budapest.

Her Hungarian rhapsody gave warning of what was to follow at the World Championships in Melbourne 2007, when she became the first woman to hold the 200m and 400m world records simultaneously since Shirley Babashoff (USA) in 1974-75. In Australia, her two gold medals were reinforced by two silvers, in the 800m freestyle (0.28sec behind Kate Ziegler, USA) and the 100m backstroke (0.43sec behind the 59.44 world record of Natalie Coughlin, USA), and a bronze as member of the French 4x200m freestyle quartet. 

In May, 2007, Manaudou left Lucas for a life with boyfriend and World-Championship bronze medallist over 400m medley, Luca Marin (ITA), in Italy. Her stay in Turin was short-lived and after returning home for two months under the guidance of coach and brother Nicolas, Manaudou moved to Mulhouse, where she would be coached by Lionel Horter until the 2008 Olympic Games. After modest to poor results in Beijing (8th 400m free 4:11.26; 7th 100m back, 1:00.10; 15th 200m back, 2:12.04), she took a break before returning to training - this time in Marseilles. She had spoken to Lucas about a possible return to Canet but the coach had insisted that she would have to do things "his way". But those days, in her mind and heart, were long gone.