Are you on the Dara Torres bandwagon?
That's what you are wondering, right? What exactly does U.S. Olympic swimmer Dara Torres have to do with boxnig. Nothing, actually.
You would think that a boxing guy would be comfortably seated on the Torres bandwagon. After all, Archie Moore fought competitively until the age of 48 and George Foreman won the heavyweight title at the age of 45. So why not. At 41, Torres is swimming faster than ever and is competing in a record fifth Olympic Games. It's a fantastic story.
So too was Mark McGwire in 1998. I was comfortably seated on the McGwire bandwagon and even brought family members out to Shea just to watch him take batting practice. We all know how that story ends. So, this time, I'll give my seat to someone else.
Let me write this in caps: DARA TORRES HAS NOT FAILED A DRUG TEST.
To our knowledge, neither did Mark McGwire in 1998 or Marion Jones in 2000.
In fact, prior to the Olympics, anticipating the scrutiny, Torres asked for stiffer drug tests.
Here's my problem. We've been disappointed too many times before. For the last 100 years, people were simply not better athletes at 41 than they were at 25. Not unless the caliber of opposition has drastically changed or not until baseball players started juicing.
When Foreman won the title at the age of 45, he knocked out Michael Moorer. Now, no one would confuse Moorer with Hall-of-Famer Joe Frazier, the man Foreman knocked out in 1973. The caliber of opposition changed drastically.
Let's make an analogy with the right gender. In 1997, Nancy Lieberman, age 38 and perhaps the greatest female basketball player of all time, played for the Mercury in the inaugural season of the WNBA. The one they called "Lady Magic" was a role player. She was a part-timer on the court struggling against women who could not have stopped her 10 years earlier. I saw her play against the Liberty that season and the game had completely passed her by.
But forget about measuring yourself against other athletes. In Torres' case, the competition is the clock. And that doesn't change. 24.38 is 24.38 seconds now, 20 years ago and 100 years ago. 24.38 was the American record Torres set in qualifying for the 50 meter freestyle in Beijing.
Maybe I'm wrong. It won't be the first time, nor will it be the last. Maybe Torres is that special kind of athlete who can defy Mother Nature and all the rules of athletics and physiology. I hope she is. We need that kind of story.
But consider one more athlete: Mark Spitz. Even Michael Phelps might concede that Spitz is the greatest American swimmer in history. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics. Here is where it gets interesting. In 1992, at the age of 41, Spitz attempted to make a comeback for the Barcelona Olympics. He failed to make the U.S. Olympic team, missing the qualifying time by two seconds.
-- CASSIDY
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Comments (8)
I agree, Cassidy. Athletes simply do not get better in their late 30s or early 40s than they were in their 20s. Like pretty much everything, athletes follow a curve. In most sports, that means they get better and better during their 20s, peak in their early 30s, and begin to decline steadily thereafter. In many individual Olympic sports (like swimming), the curve is even more compressed, with the peak and decline coming even earlier. What Ms. Torres is doing is unnatural and defies both biology and hundreds of years of proven athletic precedent. I am extremely dubious of her claims to be drug free, especially considering her ex-husband is a doctor who could easily provide her with prescriptions for performance enhancing drugs. This is no different than Barry Bonds all of a sudden hitting 73 home runs at the ancient age of 37 after having never before hit more than 50 in his great career. What both Bonds and Torres have claimed to accomplish isn't merely improbable, it's athletically and biologically impossible. I call B.S. on Dara Torres.
I think you're likely wrong. The beauty of swimming is that it's low impact. You just can't compare it to baseball, football, hockey, basketball or soccer. Your comparison to Mark Spitz holds very little water, too. Physical therapy and training have come so far since the early 90's.
However, if she is doping, it will come out because she's voluntarily (in concert with the IOC) storing blood samples for future testing. In the next few years, the methods and techniques to detect banned substances will have evolved to become more sensitive and specific.
She's doping. Athletes don't suddenly become better at the age of 40. She's a fraud, and I hope she gets caught. Seeing as how testing lags so far behind the drugs themselves and the methods of masking them, though, she's been able to get away with it to this point.
I think most of you are simply jealous. Why can't you just accept the fact that she's an incredible athlete. In regard to Mark Spitz's attempted comeback, some of his times in 1992 were FASTER than his times in 1972!! Look it up.
I don't think she's doping. She hasn't won a gold yet but she qualified. That is amazing in itself for a woman of her age. You nay sayers need to be quite so critical. She makes me, a woman of 41, happy to see someone of our age qualifying for the Olympics. Folks she's serious about the same her body is in for her age because she has 2 year at old to keep busy with .
Wlliam, Jealous of what? An athlete who has to cheat just to feed his or her ego... Sadly, athletes who accomplish amazing - other-worldly -- feats nowadays will live under a cloud of suspicion. And it's their own fault... Very sad.
bobby cassidy missed a huge point- all swimmers times have improved over the last few years because of the new more buoyant swimsuits that hve been invented. it is the swimsuit that enhances performances. dara has volunteered for additional steroids testing so she is definitely clean.
Scott, I hope you are right. I have heard about the new swimsuits. To me, it still defies the laws of nature. Too many athletes have turned up bad for me not to be a little skeptical.