Pioneer of the golden generation of French swimming in the 2000s, Olympic champion in Beijing in 2008 then in London in 2012, Alain Bernard – to be found this Saturday, July 30 in Fort Boyard – had a meteoric rise as a professional swimmer. An incredible career and track record, mentioned in his autobiography My Olympic destiny, available in bookstores since last year. In this book, he also confided in his secret “love affair” with the star of female swimming, Laure Manaudou, in 2006.
A term that had been misinterpreted at the time. “The idea was to play cards on the table. More than love, it’s a context that I wanted to explain” had he justified himself in the columns of Var-Morning. “It was a love affair. And there’s nothing denigrating about her”, he also specified nearby Figaro, adding that he had “try to talk about it with the right words“. Anyway, this relationship will not have lasted and the break will have been very brutal for the native of Aubagne.
“She threw me like a mess”
“It was a time when I was starting to gain a bit of self-confidence. We had this little secret affair that lasted a few weeks and she went from rooster to dating her Italian (the swimmer Luca Marin, editor’s note) arriving from the European championships. She no longer calculated me overnight (…) She threw me like a slob. My ego has been touched“, he confided in his book.
A difficult time for him, but he finally found the resources to move forward. “I took hits, but then I bounced back. It even helped me in the end because I was stronger behind”, did he declare. He feels no resentment towards the ex-sportswoman and he hopes in particular that this revelation will not cause hims wrong.
“I never held it against Laure, it was only a love affair of a few weeks. I hope that Laure won’t be angry with me either for having spoken about her private life and that it doesn’t make no waves“, he explained, while the swimmer has been in a relationship and married for several years to singer Jérémy Frérot, with whom she had two children (she also has an eldest daughter born from her former relationship with swimmer Frédérick Bousquet).
Alain Bernard has also turned the page since this story since he lives a happy marriage with a certain Faustine, met in 2015 and whom he married during the summer of 2020. He is notably expecting his first child with her .