Dara Torres-Amazing

A quote from The Australian News.... Even people 10 years younger than Torres will be delighted to learn her training program is dramatically different from that which took her to the Sydney Olympics. Her secret: less is more. She weighs less than when she competed in Sydney and she is swimming about 5.5km each morning, five days a week (half the workload of most elite sprinters). She also does four strength and conditioning sessions a week, three stretching sessions (which last two hours each) and has two massages. "The older I get, the less I do, the faster I go," Torres says. She is 4kg lighter than she was in 2000, having lost most of the muscle bulk she built then with heavy weightlifting. "I am lean now," she explains. "The strength work I do a lot is with the Swiss ball, working a lot of different muscles at once, working my core and rotation. I have abs you wouldn't believe. Because I don't have as much muscle, I think I swim higher in the water than I used to." Torres's results have drawn doping allegations, which she understands and is prepared to openly address. She faced those same insinuations in her previous groundbreaking comeback, so she knows they will resurface. She has asked US head coach Mark Schubert to organise extra drug testing, including blood testing, so she can answer the doubters. "It's too bad that people assume someone is taking drugs when they perform well, but I am getting tested frequently so there is no question about my performance," she says. One of the world's foremost swimming experts, Milt Nelms, does not question that Torres can be a better swimmer at 40 than she was at 20. He has watched his own partner, 1972 triple Olympic gold medallist Shane Gould, reproduce in her 40s what she did as a teenage wunderkind. Nelms, who has worked with Olympic champions Ian Thorpe and Natalie Coughlin, believes Torres will help push back the boundaries for athletes and weekend warriors. "The age thing is something we say and it's self-fulfilling," he says. "If you look at swimming, there's nothing really explosive about it, and if you have an innate ability it doesn't diminish that greatly (over time). "It's so much more about the nervous system, and what a 40-year-old person has is experience and physical intelligence, especially someone like Dara, who has taken care of herself and stayed active. Her two periods out of competition probably allowed her nervous system to restore itself from the impact of training. "Dara is physically gifted and very physically intelligent, and her capacity for work and self-discipline are exceptional. Even among professional athletes she's in the extraordinary class. She's one tough lady." Nicole Jeffery is a senior sports writer with The Australian.

A quote from The Australian News.... Even people 10 years younger than Torres will be delighted to learn her training program is dramatically different from that which took her to the Sydney Olympics. Her secret: less is more. She weighs less than when she competed in Sydney and she is swimming about 5.5km each morning, five days a week (half the workload of most elite sprinters). She also does four strength and conditioning sessions a week, three stretching sessions (which last two hours each) and has two massages. "The older I get, the less I do, the faster I go," Torres says. She is 4kg lighter than she was in 2000, having lost most of the muscle bulk she built then with heavy weightlifting. "I am lean now," she explains. "The strength work I do a lot is with the Swiss ball, working a lot of different muscles at once, working my core and rotation. I have abs you wouldn't believe. Because I don't have as much muscle, I think I swim higher in the water than I used to." Torres's results have drawn doping allegations, which she understands and is prepared to openly address. She faced those same insinuations in her previous groundbreaking comeback, so she knows they will resurface. She has asked US head coach Mark Schubert to organise extra drug testing, including blood testing, so she can answer the doubters. "It's too bad that people assume someone is taking drugs when they perform well, but I am getting tested frequently so there is no question about my performance," she says. One of the world's foremost swimming experts, Milt Nelms, does not question that Torres can be a better swimmer at 40 than she was at 20. He has watched his own partner, 1972 triple Olympic gold medallist Shane Gould, reproduce in her 40s what she did as a teenage wunderkind. Nelms, who has worked with Olympic champions Ian Thorpe and Natalie Coughlin, believes Torres will help push back the boundaries for athletes and weekend warriors. "The age thing is something we say and it's self-fulfilling," he says. "If you look at swimming, there's nothing really explosive about it, and if you have an innate ability it doesn't diminish that greatly (over time). "It's so much more about the nervous system, and what a 40-year-old person has is experience and physical intelligence, especially someone like Dara, who has taken care of herself and stayed active. Her two periods out of competition probably allowed her nervous system to restore itself from the impact of training. "Dara is physically gifted and very physically intelligent, and her capacity for work and self-discipline are exceptional. Even among professional athletes she's in the extraordinary class. She's one tough lady." Nicole Jeffery is a senior sports writer with The Australian.