This from a bbc news web item of 17 August 2000:At the other end of the age spectrum, 33-year-old Dara Torres won the women's 50m freestyle ahead of 1996 gold medallist Amy Van Dyken.
Torres, who also earned berths in the 100m freestyle and butterfly, is one of the veterans insuring that the for the first time the US women's squad is older than the men.
Of course, Torres could make her fifth Olympic Games in Beijing if she continues her recent form. She set a USA record last year with 24.53 which placed her equal fourth on the 2007 world rankings and sixth on the all-time list. However fifth on the all-time list is Jingyi Le with 24.51 from 1994 and I think everyone is of the opinion that one should not be included (turtle blood?).
Torres is 40 now and heading for 41 if she makes the USA team this year. It reminds me of the wonderfully disturbing story of why Toni Jeffs was not selected for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics by the SNZ Selectors; she was too old. I think we've gone past that type of subjectivity these days. Two years later she won a bronze in Kuala Lumpur and four years after that another bronze in Manchester setting a still standing NZ record of 25.43. (If you're counting that was 2002. She first set a NZ 50m record 13 years previously in 1989! Surely that's a record in itself?) Two years after Manchester she missed the Athens team by 0.1 and two years after that missed the Melbourne Commonwealth Games by 0.2.Age! What's that about?
By the way, if you're a genuine distance freak and wondering how these upstart sprinters managed to appear on these pages, Toni was brought up on 100km per week. Scary, but true. During 2002 she averaged 35 hours a week of physical training - swimming, biking, weights, stretching - preparing for a 25 second event. She dropped her PB by over 0.5 seconds, thats more than 50 FINA points. Try 35 hours a week, it's fun :)
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