Torres could show mother superior

BEIJING - When her teenage "daughters" on the United States team get all giggly and goofy in their dorm at the Athletes' Village, America's swimming mom is tempted to tell them to pipe down and chill out. "Then I have to remind myself that I was once them," Dara Torres says.

It's been 24 years since Torres, then a leggy and exuberant 17-year-old from Beverly Hills, Calif., made her first Olympic splash in Los Angeles, treating the Games as if they were just another swimvitational down at the USC pool.

Now 41, she's back for a record fifth lap around Olympus with one medal (the 10th of her career) already in her pocket and two more within reach tomorrow. "I want to go out there for 40-year-olds and show that age is just a number," says Torres, who was the oldest US swimming gold medalist in history when she won in 2000 and is favored to win tomorrow's 50-meter freestyle after qualifying first. "The water doesn't know how old you are."

Everybody else does, though, and more than a few skeptics find it odd that a woman in a speed race can be faster than she was when she was half her age. Torres knew there would be whispers about her doping when she made her comeback, seven years after she won five medals in Sydney. So she volunteered for Project Believe, a rigorous US Anti-Doping Agency program that subjects Torres to frequent testing.

"I need to prove that a 40-year-old is doing this clean and doing it the right way," she says. "And now, if anyone questions me, there is nothing else I can do. I have given myself out there. I have done blood tests, urine tests. Anything that they want to test I have agreed to do. So if anyone accuses me of anything, I take it as a compliment. They must think I am going that fast."

How fast? Her winning time in the 50-meter freestyle at the Olympic trials (24.25) was faster than the time that won her the bronze medal in 2000 (24.63). So was her time in the 100 free - 53.78 now, 54.43 then. When she was 21, at the peak of her career, her American record was 55.30. In a sport where most sprinters are out of the water by 30, what Torres has achieved is astounding.

It also has made her a figure of fascination, if not awe, among her younger teammates, most of whom weren't alive when Torres competed in her first Games. "She's like a cool mom who wants to hang out and bond with the team," says Christine Magnuson.

Except this mom - her daughter, Tessa, is 2 - has a trophy case full of medals. Four relay golds (one as an alternate) from three Olympics, plus a silver and a bronze from competing against doped East Germans in 1988, another silver here in the 4 x 100 free, plus three individual bronzes from Sydney, where she was the most decorated female athlete at the Games.

If Torres wins two more here in tomorrow's 50 free and the 4 x 100 medley relay, she'll tie Jenny Thompson, her old teammate, with 12 for most career medals by a US female swimmer. Yet it's not so much the number of medals as the amount of years in between them that is remarkable. Torres retired after the 1992 Games, then returned after seven years, needing to scratch a chlorinated itch that wouldn't go away.

"Dara, we don't swim that way anymore," Stanford coach Richard Quick informed her, after watching Torres in a workout with his varsity. Yet she made the 2000 team in three individual events and a couple of relays, and won medals in all of them.

Torres hung up the suit again after Sydney, became a mother, and did some masters swimming. When she posted some startling times at the world championships and her peers told her they'd love to see a 40-year-old in the Olympics, the itch returned again. This time, after another seven years away, with a child in tow, the comeback was more challenging.

Torres might not have felt 41 but her body did, even though she was swimming faster than ever. So she had shoulder surgery last November to shave down a bone spur that was tearing at a rotator cuff, then knee surgery in January to clean up a torn meniscus. Torres spent six figures to hire a coterie that includes three coaches, two masseurs, two stretchers, a chiropractor, and a nanny. She spent more time out of the water than in it, letting her body recover.

Then Torres went to the Olympic trials in Omaha, put on her ancient goggles and her brand-new Speedo LZR Racer, and beat everybody to the wall, winning the 50 and 100 free to become the oldest swimmer in the world going to Beijing. Eight years ago, a beaten younger rival accused Torres of taking her spot on the team. "Whatever," Torres shrugged. "Who are you?"

This time, her competitors viewed her as an intriguing oddity from another time dimension. At the team's post-trials training camp, three of the five skits were about Torres. "At first, a lot of the kids didn't know me, so they were kind of quiet around me," she says. "But now it's, 'Hey, come over, we want to gossip, we want to do our nails.' "

Everyone wants to ask Mom (even Michael Phelps calls her that) about how it was back in the Paleolithic era. "I came from the old school where the less suit, the better," Torres says. "Now everyone wears the long bodysuits. There weren't any semifinals, there weren't any huge TV screens or a clock in the warm-up pool. There is so much technology, and it's so different from my first trials."

What hasn't changed is the racing, and no woman on the planet is better at knowing how to make a final and grab a medal, especially in an Olympic relay. She hadn't competed in one in eight years and hadn't anchored one in 20 when she arrived here. But Torres swam a monster final leg in the 4 x 100 on the second day that held off the Australian world champions and nailed down the silver behind the Netherlands.

With Natalie Coughlin swimming the backstroke leg, it's all but certain Torres will anchor the medley, as well, which means she'll be the last American woman in the water at Olympus. She's never been in that position before.

These have not been the easiest Games for Torres. She'll have been away from her daughter for a month and she's without coach Michael Lohberg, who was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder, shortly after she made the team and is undergoing treatment. But Torres long ago figured out how to come to Olympus and come away with a bunch of medals.

"The biggest thing to realize is, it's the same as workout," America's swimming mom will tell her surrogate daughters. "My first Olympic Games, I sort of freaked out because there were 17,000 people watching and I'd never experienced that. It's still the same-sized pool. I still had the same suit on. I still was the same. That's the thing - don't let it get fear in you."