What if someone told you that the fastest female swimmer in the United States isn't some fresh-faced prodigy just entering her prime? What if it weren't someone training six hours a day, eating, breathing and living the sport?
What if, instead, the fastest American happened to be a 41-year-old mom coming back from shoulder surgery? A 41-year-old mom who already retired once? What if, against logic and odds, you heard that she has been getting faster as she has grown older? What if she went into the U.S. trials in Omaha, Neb., next week with a chance to make her fifth Olympic team, but her first since 2000?
Would you be suspicious? Skeptical? Would you think she was doping or cheating?
Go ahead and be cynical. Dara Torres doesn't mind. You can say whatever you like. She doesn't feel that she has to prove anything to you, or anyone else. She's going to let the facts speak for themselves.
And right now the facts say she's one of the fastest freestyle swimmers in the world at 41, and every drug test she has taken has come back clean. Instead of waiting for accusations, she's one of the few athletes to take an active approach to drug testing. She has volunteered to give extra urine samples, has given blood to be frozen so that it can be tested for human growth hormone in the future and even volunteered her DNA if anyone wants it.
"To me, it's a compliment," Torres says of the whispers that she must be using performance-enhancing drugs. "I know I'm not taking anything. The people I work with know I'm not taking anything. My family and friends know I'm not taking anything. For them to say I am, it's almost a compliment. It means I'm doing something out of the ordinary."
9 Olympic medals
Although those who tune into the U.S. trials next week will probably do so hoping to get their first televised look at Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff - the two Baltimore-area swimmers expected to be the stars of the Beijing Olympics - Torres might have the most compelling story in Omaha. If she makes the team, it will be her fifth Olympics, the most of any American swimmer in history. She owns nine Olympic medals and swam in her first Olympics - the 1984 Games in Los Angeles - before Phelps and Hoff were born.
"In 2000, we would always joke that she was like a mom to me," Phelps says. "That was like seven years ago. To do what she's doing now is amazing. I can guarantee you won't see me swimming when I'm 40."
