At 41 Dara Torres Has 50 Free Gold in Sight
Dara Torres by Harry How/Getty Images
Dara Torres just might be the story of the Water Cube tonight - no small feat when Michael Phelps is going for his eighth gold medal. The 41-year-old athletic marvel is on track to win a medal, possibly gold, in the women's 50-meter freestyle (airing at 10:03 pm/ET, on NBC). Torres is on her fifth Olympic team, a record for a U.S. swimmer, and she's the oldest Olympic swimmer in history - a mark she actually first made in Sydney at age 33. The 50 could bring her eleventh career medal; No. 10 was the silver she won last weekend on the 4x100 freestyle relay.
Many of Torres' teammates weren't even born when she competed in her first Olympic Games in 1984, at the tender age of 17. "I feel like a lot of times I'm one of the kids here on the team," Torres says, but in reality she's a middle-aged mama. With her 2-year-old daughter, Tessa Grace, cheering from the stands, Torres won both the 50- and 100-meter freestyles at the U.S. Olympic trials last month in Omaha. She bowed out of the Beijing 100 because it would have been too much punishment for her body.
The 6-foot-tall Torres was raised in Beverly Hills and now lives in Parkland, Florida, with her partner and Tessa's father, David Hoffman. Although retired, she resumed swimming to ease her morning sickness. Now she's setting the pace for fortysomething women, who have inundated her with phone calls and e-mails. "I get a lot of stuff about me inspiring them," Torres says. "The fun thing is they end up telling me their stories, what they're doing, and how it's made a change in their life. And it's kind of inspired me."
Her top competition Sunday morning (Saturday night in the U.S.) comes from two Australians whose combined age doesn't add up to hers: world-record holder Libby Trickett, 23, and 16-year-old Cate Campbell. Trickett's time of 23.97 seconds trumps Torres' American-record time of 24.25 from Omaha, but it was Torres who posted the top qualifying time in the semifinals, 24.27.
Torres knows that her fast times have raised suspicions about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. That's why she volunteered for an intensive drug-testing program that examines her blood in ways that aren't required by Olympic rules. The truth, says NBC swimming analyst
Rowdy Gaines (who has known Torres for about 30 years), is that she's just a gifted athlete: "She loves to work out- that's just part of her DNA."
- Karen Rosen
