Pursuing the Elixir of Perfection

Float on: Swimmer Dara Torres (Photo for TIME by Justin Stephens)

Dara Torres’s record-breaking return to Olympic-level swimming at age 41 has not only stunned sports officials but unintentionally made the American a worldwide poster girl for middle-aged vitality and strength. The nine-time Olympic medalist and mother of a two-year-old daughter is the oldest woman to ever contend at this level in her sport. Her recent qualification to battle in Beijing means that this will be her fifth Olympics. No American swimmer has ever competed in so many.

Says TIME magazine,

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.

That Torres is competing so crushingly at her age, however, is raising the question of how a woman in her 40s can be not only devastating her old records, but beating today’s better-trained, half-as-old athletes without bio-molecular enhancements, right, i.e., steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

Torres realized that peeing wasn’t going to be enough. “Who’s going to believe me if I’m just getting a urine test?” she asks.

That’s when she decided to contact Travis Tygart, ceo of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the independent body charged with conducting random drug testing of U.S. elite athletes. “She showed up without a lawyer, without an agent, without a coach,” says Tygart of their two-hour meeting at USADA’s offices in Colorado Springs last fall. “And withstood probably the worst cross examination of any of the other athletes. I kept asking her, ‘Why should I believe you?'” Torres offered samples of whatever Tygart might need to help prove her drug-free status — DNA, hair, blood, urine.

Ironically, the piece adds,

The one thing USADA could not — and cannot — provide Torres is a certificate proving she is clean. “The science is not at the stage where we can give a 100% guarantee to any athlete that they are clean,” says Tygart. “But if they aren’t clean, then they would have to be a fool, or a huge risk taker to do a program like this.”

Torres’s expected wins promise to be the most closely watched in years. Millions will be captivated by visions of her frictionless, superhero-like glides through the deep, above. Others, though, will seek proof that her victories come from unearned help. Science will settle the latter. As for the former, it appears the people have spoken.