Torres, 41, still making big splash
Unprecedented fifth trip to Olympics within reach
OMAHA - It would be a joke, except it's true. Dara Torres's goggles are older than everyone she's swimming against at the Olympic trials.
"Everyone asks if I need windshield wipers to clean them," she says. At 41, Torres is so old that only two of the women she was up against in last night's 100-meter freestyle semifinals were born when she won her first medal at the 1984 Games, and Natalie Coughlin and Margaret Hoelzer were only a year old then.
Yet after taking seven years off after 2000 - and seven years off before that - America's golden-age girl is less than a minute from making a record fifth trip to Olympus.
This was an amazing story eight years ago, when Torres brushed the cobwebs off her goggles and won five medals at Sydney, the most there by any female athlete. Now, she's not only likely to make the squad tonight after qualifying second, Torres probably will win at least one medal in Beijing and possibly as many as four.
Most athletes don't have one competitive resurrection in them, much less two, which is why Torres will be the most intriguing story at the Games if she makes it. She'll also be, literally, the most incredible. No woman in the history of her sport has been this good at this age.
Torres already has been hearing the whispers, on the pool deck and beyond. Dara must be doped. They're the same whispers she heard two quadrennia ago. "They talked about me and things were written about me and it was very hurtful and it was a big distraction," Torres said.
When she began swimming fast times again last year shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Torres knew the chatter would start anew, so she went to the US Anti-Doping Agency and volunteered for a special testing program that would certify she was clean.
"I wanted to be an open book," said Torres, who says she has been tested more than a dozen times since March. "You can DNA-test me, blood-test me, urine-test me, whatever you want to do. Just test me, because I want people to know that I am doing this right. That I am 41 years old and I am doing this and I am clean and I want a clean sport. I swam against swimmers who were dirty my entire life and it's just something I wouldn't do."
When Torres made her first big splash, winning a gold medal on the 4 x 100 freestyle relay in 1984, her sport was dominated by East German women who were doped from eyebrows to toenails. When she left after winning another gold in 1992, the Chinese were beginning to dip into the drug cabinet.
Torres couldn't fathom that. "How can they be happy that they won if they know they have cheated?" she says. "I just don't understand. I don't know how people can feel good about that."
Torres has won nine Olympic medals, four of them gold. Most came on relays, where she risked getting her teammates disqualified if she was doped. Her success came from having an ideal sprinter's body (long and narrow), lots of easy speed, and a knack for getting to the wall first.
What is remarkable is that Torres is faster now than she was when she was half as old. When she made the Olympic final in the 100 free in 1988, she swam 56.25. In yesterday's semis, she swam 53.76. Granted, the pools are faster now and the Speedo LZR Racer she wore is the fastest suit ever devised. Still, no woman has been anywhere near that fast at her age.
The secret, she says, has been her exhaustive and expensive regimen to keep her body running. Torres spends six figures annually on a coterie that includes a strength and conditioning coach, a massage therapist, a chiropractor, and a couple of stretchers.
"Age is just a number," says Torres, who turned up at the Qwest Center wearing a T-shirt that said FAITH. "I have great people around me. I am able to recover, and at my age it's all about recovery. It's not just the stuff physically, but it's also what I put in my body. I take these awesome amino acids. I eat well. I think it's just a combination of a lot of things."
Once she got here, her experience kicked in. Nobody has been to more trials than Torres. Nobody knows how terrifying it can be to take the blocks and stake four years on less than a minute. "The Olympic trials are probably the most intense and nerve-racking meet I have ever been to," she said.
Walking out onto the deck before yesterday morning's prelims, her first in eight years, Torres felt her stomach flip-flopping. "I feel like I'm 16," she said. "I'm nervous, I'm excited, I can't wait."
But once she was in the water, the killer shark in her came out again, as it did in the semis. If she can finish in the top two tonight, she'll guarantee herself at least two events in Beijing, with another chance in Sunday's 50 free. There is no precedent for this, and Torres concedes that. "I don't know what to expect," America's foremost swimming mom shrugs, "because I am 41."
John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.
