Swimming Special Report: Olympic gold medallist Dara Torres (Part 2)
Dara Torres is one of the most popular swimmers in the history of modern American swimming. Besides her great athletic performances, she is particularly known for her participation in the maximum number of Olympic Games in her athletic career. Moreover,
Torres was the oldest swimmer on the American team in the 2000 and 2008 Summer Olympics. Her extensive Olympic career is elaborated below.
The first Olympic that she contended in was the 1984 Summer Olympics that were held in Los Angeles, California. She won the gold medal for the US team in the women’s 4 into 100 metre relay heats event. She thus qualified for the final of the event. Her teammates
in the event were Nancy Hogshead, Jenna Johnson and Carrie Steinseifer.
Four years later, at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul South Korea, Torres won the bronze medal in the 4 into 100 metre freestyle relay final event along with her teammates Mitzi Kremer, Laura Walker and Mary Wayte. She also won a silver medal in the freestyle
leg of the 4 into 100 metre medley relay event. She was also the seventh place finisher in the 100 metre freestyle meet.
She swam the second leg in the 4 into 100 metre freestyle relay event at the 1992 Summer Olympics that took place in Barcelona, Spain. She was joined by her teammates, Nicole Haislett, Angel Martino and Jenny Thompson.
Five of Torres’ Olympic medals were won by her in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney Australia. She once again swam the second leg in the 4 into 100 metre freestyle event along with the swimmers Amy Van Dyken, Courtney Shealy and Jenny Thompson. She then
went on to win the gold medal in the 4 into 100 metre medley relay event. Torres then bagged bronze medals in the 50 metre freestyle event, 100 metre butterfly and the 100 metre freestyle meet. Torres was 33 years old at that time, the oldest on the US Olympic
team. US swim team was the only one at the 2000 Summer Olympics to have won more than five gold medals.
Torres was 41 years of age when she participated in her fifth Olympic Games, the 2008 Summer Olympics. She became the first female swimmer above forty to have taken part in the Olympics. She made it to the final meet of the 50 metre freestyle event. The
semi final race of the event took place on the 6th of July 2008, in which she surpassed the American record by finishing the race in a time of 24.38 seconds. Torres also pulled out of the 100 metre freestyle events so that she could conserve her
energy for the 50 metre freestyle finals. She won the silver medal in the 4 into 100 metre freestyle relay event. Torres then went on to win two more silver medals in the 50 metre freestyle event and the 4 into 100 metre medley relay meet.
After the Summer Olympics 2008, Torres then took part in the 2009 National and World Championships. She won the 50 metre freestyle and 50 metre butterfly events which were the qualifying events for the 2009 World Championships that were scheduled to take
place in Rome, Italy. This was the first World championships in which she finished the 50 metre butterfly event in the eighth spot. However, in the heats event of the 50 metre butterfly meet, she could not go beyond the qualifying heats.
In September 2010, Dara Torres announced that she will be competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics that will be taking place in London, England. She has just recovered from a surgery of one of her knees, and has already begun training and practising to achieve
her goals in the upcoming Olympics.
Dara Torres has proved herself as one of the best butterfly and freestyle swimmers in the world and acts as the perfect example of the notion “Age is Just a Digits”, also the title of her inspirational memoirs published in 2009.
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