Unless you’ve been in exile, or had your head burried in the sand, you have at least heard a little about the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.  But have you ever considered who’s who among the top athletes to watch?  Well here’s an olympian to keep your eye on – Dara Torres.   Torres, a nine-time Olympic medalist in swimming, is 41, the mother of a two-year old, and has just qualified for her fifth Olympic Games, something no other swimmer has ever done. Oh, and the time in the 100m freestyle that got her a ticket to Beijing? It was 2.47 seconds faster than her Olympic effort in 1988, at age 21 — a lifetime in such a short race. So I keep flashing to images of body builders and athletes pumped on steroids with veins bulging out their eyeballs and wondering, Does she or doesn’t she?

This is why it’s hard to be Dara Torres. In the weeks following the Olympic Trials in July, where she earned spots in the 50m and 100m freestyle events and potentially a relay, there are only two questions anyone wants to ask her: Why are you putting yourself through this again? And: What are you putting in youself to make it through?

Physically, Torres looks as taut and toned as swimmers half her age, and not only did she clock the fastest times in her events, but she set a new American record for the 50m free, the splash-and- dash across one length of the pool that is her specialty. (She decided not to swim the 100m free in Beijing.)The holder of that previous record? None other than Torres’ younger self, who set the mark at her last Olympics, in 2000. And think about this: She first set the 50m world mark in 1982, at age 14. Amanda Beard, the second oldest woman on the U.S. team, was then barely a year old. Torres is 12 lbs. lighter now than she was in Sydney, and, she says, “I really feel like I enjoy swimming now more than I ever have. I enjoy competing more than I ever have.”

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