Interesting article about her new found prowess.
[url]http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news;_ylt=AsAWjUq0U8N5Ypzfn 7MhhayVTZd4?slug=cr-torres070408&prov=yhoo&type=lgns [/url]
AHA, Neb. - As Olympic stories go, it is an exclamation mark on an achievement that will spend the next two months being bent into a question mark.
Knowing that fact, Dara Torres spent part of Friday night shrugging off the doubt that is bound to settle on her chiseled shoulders over the next two months. At 41 years old and having qualified for her fifth Olympic team, the marble-physiqued Torres now owns potentially the most intriguing feel-good story line this side of Michael Phelps.
And with it, she also has materialized as the Olympian most likely to bear the brunt of suspicious success in the post-BALCO era.
At 41, she has done what most would have termed impossible since retiring (for the second time, no less) after the 2000 games: bear a child, get diagnosed with asthma, go through recent knee and shoulder surgeries, and arrive at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials posting faster times than in her mid-20s. Yet, when she touched a wall in the 100-meter freestyle Friday night, she squinted at digits that seemed downright impossible. Torres qualified for the Olympic team by edging out a 25-year-old Natalie Coughlin by five one hundredths of a second - 53.78 to 53.83 - in an event in which Coughlin holds the American record.
In an instant, we were given the light and dark side of an Olympic moon - with Torres becoming the symbol of warring beliefs. On one hand you had a baby-toting mother overcoming the longest of odds, providing a rallying cry for the middle aged and giving a booster shot to the ageless spirit of competition. On the other, you had the sinister raised eyebrow of unproven doping assumptions. (snip)
