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LINCICOME: Torres finds fountain of youth

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 11, 2008 at 11:29 p.m.

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Swimmer Dara Torres, 41, celebrates after setting an American record in winning the 50-meter freestyle during the Olympic trials in Omaha.

Photo by Donald Miralle / Getty Images

Swimmer Dara Torres, 41, celebrates after setting an American record in winning the 50-meter freestyle during the Olympic trials in Omaha.

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In the next month or so, we will get to know our Olympic athletes a whole lot better, but one we know already. Well, let's see. Pick one of the following:

Tyson Gay, sprinter.

Dara Torres, swimmer.

Lopez Lomong, 1,500-meter runner.

Of the 600 or so athletes the U.S. will send to Beijing, all with a story to tell, the one who has already gotten more attention, more exposure, more press, more of all that stuff that Olympic athletes only get to wallow in once every four years, the sweetheart of the American team is (and I've given it away haven't I?) Dara Torres, who competes in a sport in which what is seen of her is mostly her right ear.

She's been on Leno, she's been on every sports front page, she is more the darling of NBC-TV than Tina Fey -- and all because she won two swimming races at the Olympic trials.

Big deal? Michael Phelps won four and plans on getting eight gold medals to go with the six he won in Athens. Gay ran the fastest 100 meters ever, though it was aided by wind. Lomong finished third in his race but made the team, one of the so-called "Lost Boys of the Sudan," given a chance to chase the American dream.

Of all the stories of the Olympic trials, the swimming, the diving, the track and field, the gymnastics, none caught the public fancy more than that of Torres, or of NBC, anyhow, and what fascinates NBC will charm the rest of us. Or else.

Is she the best female swimmer? No. That would be Katie Hoff, who will be swimming for six medals. Alas, Hoff has the misfortune of being at the very top of her game, doing what she is supposed to be doing when she is supposed to be doing it, at age 19.

Olympic pools are full of teenagers, and Torres was once one herself, at the '84 Games in Los Angeles at 17. And no one paid this kind of attention to her. Not through four other Olympics, not with nine medals -- four gold -- not even when she was too old to be swimming in Sydney, at age 33, and winning.

But now that she is 41, carrying her daughter on her hip to get her medal for setting an American record in the 50-meter sprint, she can't see where she's going for the flashbulbs.

Oh, middle age is not supposed to be like this. And that's just the problem.

Anyone past the age of 40 wants this to be a true story, wants nothing to mar the wonder of being able to still do something better than before, to not be jaded by other examples of athletes improving when they should be getting worse.

One tries not to recall the case of Mark Spitz, America's greatest swimmer, trying to do what Torres has done, at the same age, and being left like chum in the water.

We remember the wonderful summer of '98 and the Mark McGwire- Sammy Sosa home run race, only to stagger through disillusionment since. And what we shall do eventually with Barry Bonds remains vexing, except to know that we should not be fooled again.

Torres has never failed a drug test. She says she is willing to give any fluid for any test. She takes doubt as a compliment. You want to believe it is the new swimsuits that make her quicker - not only faster than herself, but all the others, too.

We were in love with Marion Jones and we see her sobbing on the way to prison. Her significant other, Tim Montgomery, once the world-record holder, was stripped of his records.

The Tour de France pedals on without Floyd Landis, and that charge up the mountain, one of the single greatest examples of courage and grit, is now just another fraud.

Torres may be all she seems, her story as stirring as it is suspicious, but this is now the world of sports, where every achievement is mistrusted, and inspiration must outwait review, innocence needing to be proved instead of assumed.

Even if Torres were not the oldest American to swim in the Olympics, all the mistrust would still be there, as it is for younger athletes in all sports. Olympic drug testing is the Inspector Javert of games.

We cannot escape being dubious.

Comments

  • July 12, 2008

    8:40 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    geochuck writes:

    Where did you learn to write like that. It reminds me of a school in my home town. It was called Dumb Dumb College. You know nothing about the sport of swimming. Don't lump swimmers with the drug user sports you always write about. It is not the same thing.