Dara Torres: Olympic Swimming's Full-Time Mom, Full-Time Champion
The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing came with more fanfare and anticipation than any Olympics in recent history.
The temporary opening of China's borders and the breathtaking—and controversial—Opening Ceremony combined to move the world to the edge of its collective seats.
And as fellow American swimmer Michael Phelps, then 23 years old, took to the pool in pursuit of Mark Spitz and history, another American swimmer's story captured the hearts of watchers.
A 41-year-old mother of one, Dara Torres set her eyes on a historic comeback to the sport she had dominated for parts of three decades.
A quarter-century ago, Torres announced her presence internationally at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games with a gold medal in the 4x100m freestyle. As a 17-year-old in those Games, she fit the mold of a world-class swimmer.
In each successive Olympics but the 1996 and 2004 Games, Torres came home with at least one medal. She even won five medals—three bronze and two gold, both individual and relay—in the 2000 Sydney Games as the oldest member of her American swimming squad.
She was 33 years old back then.
But eight years removed from her last Olympic triumphs, Torres was more than a seasoned veteran—she was old enough to be most of her competitors' mother, let alone be a mother herself.
She certainly had the confidence of an Olympic champion in the lead-up to her races, constantly addressing the glaring age gap with finesse and a smile. She believed in herself, and she could not imagine why the American public would not as well.
Her teammates elected her—along with Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin—a captain prior to the Games.
And Torres even submitted herself for a voluntary drug screening program to allay any fears or accusations of performance-enhancing drugs.
So when the games finally began, the American public did not tune out when Phelps hopped out of the pool. Instead, Torres grabbed America's attention.
She and Phelps—a one-two male-female punch that no other country could match—traded time in the spotlight. After the country roared for Phelps' team's come-from-behind victory in the 4x100m freestyle relay, it then cheered for Torres' team's second-place finish in the same event.
Torres was the anchor of that relay, unheard of for such a senior member of the squad.
Over the next week, Torres collected silver medals in her other two events, missing a gold in the 50m individual freestyle by 0.01 seconds.
She followed that near-victory with her third silver in three tries with the 4x100m medley relay less than 40 minutes later.
And while Torres did not leave Beijing with more gold medals than when she had arrived, she had three more silver medals for her collection.
But she also had much more than just medals to bring back—she had a transcendent story, triumphant for so much more than just herself.
Through it all—the whirlwind schedule, the rigorous training, the international microscope—Torres handled her comeback for a fifth Summer Games with the grace and ease of global role model and champion.
Torres talks life, swimming and staying fit in new book
At 6 a.m. Beijing time, Dara Torres awoke in her room at the Olympic Village and started her day.
Drink a Living Fuel breakfast shake at 6:15.
Get on the 6:45 bus to the Water Cube and arrive 15 minutes later.
Go for a quick swim, then take a hot shower, stretch and “get mashed.”
Wait in the team room.
Minutes before the start of the race -- the 50m freestyle final -- Torres was called into the ready room and shortly after that, she and the seven other swimmers walked onto the pool deck and prepared to swim the equivalent of track and field’s 100-meter dash.
The splash and dash. In 24 or 25 seconds, the fastest female swimmer in the world would be crowned. Could Torres, whose four previous Olympic gold medals were in relays, finally get an individual title?
“I went to the pool at 7 a.m. that morning with my coach Mark Schubert and nobody was there except Bob Costas,” Torres recalled Tuesday morning during a phone interview. “I yelled, ‘Good morning!’ to him. I went for a wake-up swim, checked out the pool, noted where the underwater cameras and marks on the bottom of the pool were ... got my plan. I was nervous but obviously excited.”
After the starting tone went off, Torres cut through the water at breakneck speed -- albeit gracefully -- and touched the wall in 24.07 seconds. It was her fastest swim ever and it broke the American record, but she finished 0.01 seconds short of a gold medal. German Britta Steffen clocked in at 24.06 and won the race.
Torres was second. In her mind, even though she had just earned an Olympic medal at the age of 41, she had simply lost.
“Needless to say I was happy,” said Torres, who became the oldest medalist in Olympic swimming history -- after becoming the oldest swimmer to make the U.S. Olympic team. “I can't look at it as a failure, that's a pretty harsh word. To me, in my head on the competitive side, I lost.”
Torres, eight months removed from her performance in Beijing during which she won three silver medals, released her memoirs on Tuesday. “Age Is Just A Number,” which she co-wrote with New York Times Magazine contributing writer Elizabeth Weil, takes a walk through her entire swimming career -- from when she was a teenager living in California and then as a student-athlete at the University of Florida, to her three comebacks as an adult.
She revisits past successes -- setting world and American records, winning Olympic medals -- and talks about the more difficult times in her life too. During her four years as a swimmer at Florida, she became bulimic. She’s dealt with two divorces, the death of her father and fertility problems. Michael Lohberg, the coach who guided Torres during her comeback for the Beijing Games, was stricken with a serious illness and was unable to travel to China for the Olympics.
In the book, Torres talks about getting back into the water in 2005 when she was pregnant with her first child. Despite being retired, it had been in Torres’ plans to resume swimming when she was expecting. Torres and David Hoffman, her boyfriend and the father of her daughter Tessa, joined a Masters swim club near their home in Parkland, Fla.
Torres had not been in the water for five years and, she says in her book, those first few laps on Day 1 were a challenge.
“For the first few laps I felt sluggish and winded, unconnected to the water I used to love,” she writes. “Then my stroke started coming back. The water started feeling heavy in my hands, like it’s supposed to. I didn’t have the dreaded sensation of just spinning my arms and not getting anywhere, like a cyclist trying to bike in too low a gear.”
After that, it was like she had never been out of the pool.
A few months after Tessa was born, Torres -- who swam right up until almost the final day of her pregnancy -- competed at the 2006 Masters World Championships at Stanford in August. On her last day at the meet, Torres was scheduled to swim the first leg of a coed 4x50-meter freestyle relay. She would be swimming her favorite distance, 50 meters. Torres broke the 50-meter freestyle world record three times in the 1980s.
Torres’ split time that day was 25.9 seconds, qualifying her for the U.S. Olympic Trials before the Beijing Games.
She and her all-star crew began training for Beijing. Lohberg was the master coach and directed Torres during each swimming workout. Anne Tierney and Steve Sierra stretched and “mashed” her -- mashing is a type of massage in which the masseuse uses his or her feet on the patient. This kept Torres’ muscles loose during those long months of intense training.
“They were my team and there was just no way I could have gotten [to Beijing] without my team,” Torres said of Tierney and Sierra. “I really couldn't have. Being flexible is extremely important. Training the way swimmers train and elite athletes train ... you definitely become tight. When you're in a pool you want to feel on top of the water and you want to feel loose. They helped me recover quicker and get ready for the next day.”
Aside from her silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle last August, Torres won two more silvers at the 2008 Olympics -- in the 4x100-meter freestyle and 4x100-meter medley races. The trio of medals brought her career total to 12 in five Olympics, tying her with Jenny Thompson for the most medals by an American woman.
So, what’s next?
Torres competed at the Austin Grand Prix in early March and won the only race she entered -- the 50-meter freestyle. She is looking forward to the U.S. Championships in July, and then the World Championships in Rome a few weeks later.
Torres currently swims 4,500-5,000 meters per week as she prepares herself for another big summer. After that, the 2011 Worlds are the next bigtime swimming meet. And of course, the London 2012 Olympics are also on the horizon. She will be 45 that year -- can her body hold up for one more Olympics?
“I think that right now I am just gearing towards Worlds,” she said. “I've endured many injuries and I am not sure yet."
But then again, age is just a number.
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