The Olympic champion talks to MORE about her post-40 swimming career and her plans to compete again in July.
When Dara Torres speaks, an allusion to swimming is never far away. "I'm still testing the waters to see what my limits are," says the perpetual comeback queen, explaining why, instead of hanging up her goggles after winning three silver medals at the Beijing Olympics, she is now training for the world championships in Rome this coming July.
She has just tiptoed barefoot down the hall of her ranch house near Fort Lauderdale, hoping to avoid waking daughter Tessa. "She's a mini-me," says Torres, who turns 42 this month. "We butt heads, and she's only 3."
Torres admits that the last few months have been consumed by "fine-tuning my body and getting things repaired." She rolls up her jeans to reveal fresh scars from surgery on her left knee and mentions a recent operation on her shoulder. She is also sporting a cast on her left thumb because of a torn ligament from slamming her finger into the wall during her final Olympic race. "My surgeon says, 'You're back again?'"
Torres speaks with humor about her self-image. ("I have no chest; when I go to Victoria's Secret, I have to ask if they have training bras.") She candidly describes her stressful but ultimately successful in vitro efforts to get pregnant with Tessa, whose father is her partner, fertility doctor David Hoffman. ("With swimming, I always believe I can do something, but with this, I couldn't always think positively because I wasn't in control.") At every turn, she reveals herself to be a woman eager for adventure and determined to be a winner.
MORE: Tell us why you've decided to continue competing.
Torres: I came back from the Olympics and made the mistake of saying to Mark Schubert, the U.S national team coach, "I'm thinking of swimming again." There was a little silence, and then Mark said, "Why wouldn't you? You were only less than a tenth of a second off the world record, and you were the fastest American." He knows just the right buttons to push.
MORE: Were you offended when some people said, "She must be taking drugs to be so fast at 41"?
Torres: It's the most hurtful thing. I was angry when journalists would ask to interview me and do stories that were drug-related, saying, "I wanted to believe Dara." I have a daughter who is one day going to read all this stuff. I've done everything I possibly can to prove that I was clean. I went to the head of the United States anti-doping agency and asked to be tested any way they wanted. They keep the samples for years. How can anyone in their right mind who is cheating decide to go through all that?
MORE: Do you get angry at the athletes who have used drugs?
Torres: How can you not? What I don't understand is how these athletes don't have consciences.
MORE: Once you finished the Olympics, did you think, instead of eating healthy food I can now have a hot fudge sundae?
Torres: I was just on the phone with this girl who is a swimmer, and I said, "Hold on a second; I'll have a Big Mac with fries and a Coke." She was like, "Don't even tell me you're at a McDonald's," and I said, "Well, yeah." I had an eating disorder in college, and I went for years restricting myself from specific foods, looking at labels. I don't want to deprive myself, because then I think you just want it even more.
MORE: How did you deal with your eating disorder?
Torres: It was a real dark thing in my life. I don't think I would have had it if I wasn't an athlete. I finally went to a doctor, who asked, "Do you make yourself throw up?" and I said, "No," and then I felt horrible that I'd lied to her. I marched back in and told her the truth. She sent me to a psychiatrist. I threw up less, but it went on. When I decided to try for the 1992 Olympics, I knew I didn't want to have this problem. So I stopped cold turkey.
MORE: Would you consider another Olympics?
Torres: You have to take it day by day. I'm not going to put it out of my head until I know what my body can and can't do.
MORE: What happens when you don't train? Do your muscles turn to flab?
Torres: I'm not the type to ever want to find that out. If I was not swimming, I'd probably work out a few hours a day, do aerobics, weights, play tennis. It's not just the way it makes me look; it makes me feel good inside.
MORE: Are you competitive in areas other than swimming, like card games?
Torres: Everything. I want to be first, I want to win.
MORE: Can you turn it off?
Torres: Yeah. I don't like being like that with someone. David is better at golf than I am, and I like for the guy to be better than me at something. When it's someone you're with, you don't want to dominate.
MORE: When you think about a career after swimming, what might it be?
Torres: I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. I've always enjoyed television and being in front of a camera, reporting and interviewing.
MORE: Are you in better shape now than you were at 20?
Torres: I'm in the best shape of my life. I can't do what I did when I was 20, as far as training, yet I can swim faster. When I'm standing on the blocks, I don't think, oh, I'm 42 and these girls are 15 or 16 years old. I feel like an athlete; I'm one of them, and I'm going to compete against my competitors.
Read an excerpt from Dara Torres' forthcoming memoir, Age Is Just a Number (Broadway Books), in MORE's April issue, on newsstands March 24.
Originally published in MORE magazine, April 2009.