August 19, 2006

Dara Torres to Come Out of Retirement

Posted by Scott

According to the USA Today four-time Olympic swimmer Dara Torres is coming out of retirement again and is setting her sights on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. Torres is 39 and has won nine Olympic medals in her illustrious career. She set a world record in her age group (35-39) during the mixed 200 meter freestyle relay in last week’s Masters World Championships in Stanford, California.

Just three and a half months after giving birth to her first child, she swam a leadoff 50 freestyle relay split in 25.98 (the world mark was 26.53). Her 50 time is nearly two seconds slower (24.63) than the one that won her a bronze medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics but was good enough to meet the 2008 Olympic trials qualifying standard.

She has been retired for the last six years, sitting out the 2004 Olympics. “I’ve had so many people come up to me and say they’d love to see a 40-year-old make the Olympic team, so if it inspires others, then it’s rewarding for me, too,” Torres says.

She will be 41 at the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The last time she came out of retirement, after being out of the water for seven years, Torres, then 33, was the talk of the 2000 Games, winning two gold and three bronze medals. She became the oldest American, male or female, to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. But Torres says her fifth time around isn’t only about winning medals but rather about breaking barriers for women and mothers in their 40s and showing herself that she can swim at a level nobody ever has.

“Even if I don’t make it, just going through the process will enrich me,” says Torres, who lives with Hoffman in Parkland, Fla., and has worked since 2000 as a television commentator, motivational speaker and corporate spokeswoman.

During her pregnancy, she laid off exercise until she was safely into her second trimester. Then she began swimming.

“I was nauseous until five and a half months,” she says. “I figured it was easier to throw up in the pool gutter than in the gym beside the StairMaster. I felt comfortable in the water. The baby was floating in fluid. It was different from anything I’d ever experienced.”

Torres already has begun laying out a Beijing training program with Coral Springs coach Michael Lohberg . She says she can’t do the near around-the-clock training and body work she did for Sydney but will focus on quality workouts - and plenty of family time.

“Is a relay spot doable? Yes,” Torres says. “Can I do what I did in 2000? Absolutely not. But could I make the team? I’ve got a shot. Why do this? Because I want to!”

From the USA Today