Since I am in the Dixie Zone, I was perusing the results of meets this weekend and saw that Dara Torres, who turned 40 on Sunday, went 21.91 in the 50 free and 48.34 in the 100 free this weekend in St. Petersburg this past weekend. I guess that she is serious about this comeback. It will be interesting to see how she can do long course.
Since I was at Y Nationals, I looked up results to see how she would have done against the men. There was one 31 yo who was faster in both the 50 and 100 and a 45 yo who was faster in the 100 by a small amount. Pretty incredible.
I wonder how hard Dara has been training to this point? If she's only semi-serious at this point look out!
It will be interesting to see what happens if she does make the Olympic team. I think most people will be impressed and very supportive, but I bet there will be some people who feels she's "stealing" a spot from a younger athlete who hasn't been to the Olympics before.
They might say the same thing about 40 year old Gail Devers, who's back in great form at age 40 in the "dryland" sprint events. Hers is an amazing story as well - she had a severe health issue, yet now at age 40 is on top of the world again in the sprints. I would love to see Devers make the 08 Olympic team in track and Torres make the 08 Olympic team in swimming. That would show those young upstarts!
I wonder how hard Dara has been training to this point? If she's only semi-serious at this point look out!
It will be interesting to see what happens if she does make the Olympic team. I think most people will be impressed and very supportive, but I bet there will be some people who feels she's "stealing" a spot from a younger athlete who hasn't been to the Olympics before.
They might say the same thing about 40 year old Gail Devers, who's back in great form at age 40 in the "dryland" sprint events. Hers is an amazing story as well - she had a severe health issue, yet now at age 40 is on top of the world again in the sprints. I would love to see Devers make the 08 Olympic team in track and Torres make the 08 Olympic team in swimming. That would show those young upstarts!
