[citation needed] Manaudou is currently tied for third (three medals altogether) on the all-time list of French multiple female Winter or Summer Olympic medal winners along with Micheline Ostermeyer, Marielle Goitschel, Pascale Trinquet-Hachin, Perrine Pelen, Anne Briand-Bouthiaux, Marie-José Pérec, Félicia Ballanger and Camille Muffat.

Laure Manaudou won three gold medals at the 2004 European Swimming Championships in Madrid, Spain, in the 100-metre backstroke, 400-metre freestyle, and the 4×100-metre medley relay.

Pundits were already predicting that Manaudou would eventually eclipse the world-record mark in the 400-m freestyle set by Janet Evans at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

On 12 May 2006, Manaudou broke Janet Evans's world record in the women's 400-meter freestyle swim that had stood for 18 years.

On 6 August 2006, on the final day of the 2006 European Swimming Championships in Budapest, she broke her own world record with a time of 4:02.13 in winning the 400-m freestyle title.

On 17 September 2009, at 22 years of age, Manaudou announced through the newspaper Le Parisien her retirement from competitive swimming.

She made her return to competition on July 14, 2011, in Tigers colours at a small swimming meet in Athens, Georgia, in the United States, where she set a personal record in the 50-m freestyle event (25.84 s).

[6] The weekly magazine Paris Match ran a cover story on Manaudou in its 5–11 April 2007 issue.

Manaudou is now dating Fréro Delavega singer Jérémy Frérot,[7] with whom she has two sons, and also a daughter from a previous relationship with Frédérick Bousquet.