My two favorite spectator sports are professional tennis and competitive swimming. Therefore, I was in sports heaven last weekend as I watched the women’s final at Wimbledon on Saturday morning, the men’s final on Sunday morning and the final races of this year’s Olympic trials in swimming on Sunday night.
And, having already commented on the tennis (see Sunday below), I feel obliged to share some thoughts on the swimming; in particular, on the stunning performance of Dara Torres.
Torres, of course, is the 41-year-old mother who seemed to defy all of the presumptions about age by winning both the 50 and 100-meter freestyle races (even setting an American record in the former).
This remarkable feat qualified her to represent the U.S. in the summer Olympic Games for an unprecedented 5th consecutive time. (She won 9 Olympic medals at her four previous Games.)
But, as a former competitive swimmer myself, I know enough to know that heralding Torres as the “new face of middle-aged weekend warriors everywhere” is fatuous. After all, this is a women who trains for hours at least five-times a week and has more in common physically with the teenagers and twenty-somethings she competed against than with her forty-something peers.
Then, I regret, there’s the inescapable question about whether she swam her way onto yet another Olympic team by using performance enhancing drugs. And, frankly, no one is more suspicious in this respect than I.
To her credit, however, Torres has been forthright is addressing this rather awkward question in every interview:
I told officials [at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency] I wanted to be an open book…. You can DNA test me, blood test me, urine test me, whatever you want to do, because I want people to know I am doing this right. I am clean, and I want a clean sport.
Of course, Olympic track and field champion Marion Jones said much the same thing … until she was caught, which prompted me to note the following in a commentary entitled “…Why, Marion? Why?”:
Her fall from grace will leave fans of every Olympic sport wondering, quite rightly, if Marion wasn’t clean, then who is…?
Still, I am prepared to give Torres the benefit of the doubt – no matter how improbable her performance. I just hope some Chinese spy doesn’t slip something in her breakfast tea in Beijing to cause her to test positive at the Games next month….
Go Dara!
Meanwhile, 23-year-old Michael Phelps – defending Olympic champion in six events – dominated amongst the men by qualifying first in five more at these trials, namely: the 200 and 400 individual medley, 100 and 200 butterfly, and the 200 freestyle.
Moreover, he has another shot at emulating Mark Spitz’s record of winning seven gold medals at one Olympic Games, which Spitz did in Munich in 1972.
And 19-year-old Katie Hoff matched Phelps’ feat amongst the women by also qualifying first in five events: the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle, and the 200 and 400 individual medley.
But, as a final thought, I feel obliged to note that there’s no greater indication that age affects Torres’s performance than her conceding the prospect of pulling out of the 100 meter freestyle. This she believes might be necessary to conserve her energy to give her the best shot at winning gold in the 50 in Beijing. However, then she would be competing in only one individual event; whereas, Phelps and Hoff will be competing in five.
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Jones admits using steroids: Why, Marion? Why…?
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