the French championship in Tours with the time of 4:03.03. 2006 European Championships 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. Manaudou then held the same world record for nearly two 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. She also won the 800-m freestyle (in European record time), 200-m individual medley and 100-m backstroke titles. In addition, she obtained the bronze medal in the 200-m freestyle, 4×200-m team freestyle and 4×100-m team medley. With her four titles, she equalled the record of the number of individual titles won in the same European swimming championships held by East Germany's Ute Geweniger (1981) and Hungary's Krisztina Egerszegi (1993). 2007 World Championships Manaudou broke the 200-m freestyle world record at the 2007 World Swimming Championships in Melbourne in winning the final. She also won the 400-m freestyle event. She obtained silver medals in the 100-m backstroke and the 800-m freestyle, and a bronze for 4×200-m freestyle relay. In the 100-m backstroke, she became the second woman in history to swim under a minute in the event. She was leading the race in the 800-m final going into the last lap, but the American Kate Ziegler finally overtook her in the last metres to win by a margin of 28 cm. She was thus prevented from becoming the first female swimmer to win the 200-m, 400-m and 800-m freestyle titles at the same World Championships. 2008 Olympics In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Manaudou was unable to recapture her form from the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. After starting strong and holding the lead at the 200-meter mark, she finished last (eighth) in the 400-m freestyle final with a finishing time of 4:11.26. After the defeat, Manaudou admitted giving up during the race after struggling to keep up. She then finished seventh in the 100-m backstroke final. In her final hope for a medal, in the 200-m backstroke, she finished last in her semifinal heat and was eliminated. Retirement and comeback On 17 September 2009, at 22 years of age, Manaudou announced through the newspaper Le Parisien her retirement from competitive swimming. She was quoted as saying, "It came to me little by little.