Monique Libotte Berlioux

French swimming champion, an Olympian, a heroine during WWII and a journalist who became director of the International Olympics Committee (IOC).. For 10 years Berlioux was a French national swim champion, capturing over 40 titles, and was a semi-finalist at the London Olympic Games in 1948. As a member of the French underground during World War II she had put her expert swimming skills and stamina to good use. She often swam the River Seine with messages to help her fellow patriots defeat the Germans. Educated at the Sorbonne, where she earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in 1947, she became a journalist, special reporter and columnist for French TV and the BBC from 1947- 1959; she also wrote columns for a Paris newspaper. She was subsequently appointed media chief for the Olympics by then- IOC President Avery Brundage. In 1971 she was appointed director of the IOC (International Olympics Committee). She resigned her position in 1985 feeling that her differences with IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch were irreconcilable.. From 1985 until 1999, she served as Paris Deputy Mayor. She married Serge Groussard on, February 29, 1956.