FemmeFan Weekly

July 10, 2008

Real Sports – Oh How I’ve Missed You

Those of you who have followed my writing for the last eight years know I’m a passionate football fan. Other sports leave me feeling unfulfilled, restless and bored.

So it will come as no surprise that in July I’m typically involved in things not related to sports, unless you consider barbeques, swimming in the pool and lounging in the sun, sports.

But, an interesting thing happened on my way to complacency this July Fourth weekend. I not only watched sports, I watched sports of the best, most entertaining and thrilling kind. And the names of the athletes?
With the exception of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal (who played an absolutely incredible tennis match), these athletes names are not household names, yet.

Track and Field

LoLo Jones
Tyson Gay

Swimming

Michael Phelps
Natalie Coughlin
Amanda Beard
Haley MacGregor
Katie Hoff
Dara Torres
Cullen Jones

But let’s go back to the Men’s Single championship match at Wimbledon for a moment.

There was a lot on the line for the defending Champion Roger Federer, and almost as much for 22 year old Spaniard Rafael Nadal. He's the first Spanish man to win at the All England Club since Manolo Santana in 1966.
I enjoy watching the Wimbledon matches; there is always a heightened sense of anticipation for these matches.
I noted that here on the West Coast the Men’s singles match was had a start time of 6 am.

I awoke at 8 am and turned it on, I figured the match would be nearing the end and I could catch the last set.

But they had only played two sets and Nadal had won them both! I will not give you a blow by blow of this match.  There are just some things in life you must experience yourself to appreciate. If you didn’t watch the match, get a copy somewhere and watch the whole thing. It was an exquisite example of athletic skill, determination and heart. Federer and Nadal played wonderfully and in the end, after five incomparable sets, after rain delays and almost five hours of play, Rafael Nadal took the match.
Now that was fun!

I also had the pleasure of catching the Olympic Trials in swimming and Track and Field.

As a sports fan I always considered the Olympics the pinnacle of the sports world. I believe it is the greatest achievement in an athlete’s life. But the Olympics Games all too often have become the Patriot Games, with too much politics causing distractions away from the actual Games. The Trials don’t have that international baggage. They trials pit athletes from national teams head to head for a spot on the Olympics team.  

There is a great story coming out of the trials, the Dara Torres story.
She is demonstrating what young men and women with the heart will do to win it all.
By now everybody knows that Dara is 41 years old and the mother of a two year old Tessa. Dara is getting the attention she deserves because her story resonates with women everywhere.

Dara Grace Torres was born April 15, 1967, in Los Angeles, California.
Torres is Hispanic and Jewish on her father's side. Torres and her partner, David Hoffman, have a daughter named Tessa Grace, born in April 2006.

She will be the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympics: 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2008. She will compete in the Beijing Olympic Games in the 50 meter freestyle, 4 x 100 medley relay, 4 x 100 freestyle relay, and has the option to swim the 100 meter freestyle.
*Note - On July 7, 2008, Torres confirmed that she will be pulling out of 100 M Freestyle swim for her time at the Beijing Olympics. She will be focusing her efforts on the 50 M Freestyle

She has won nine Olympic medals, including four golds, and won five medals alone in Sydney in 2000. After the 2000 Olympics Dara retired (for the second time) to start a family. But she went right back to swimming and broke a world record at the 2006 Masters Nationals, just three weeks after giving birth to Tessa.

On August 1st, 2007 at the age of 40 (just 15 months after giving birth to her first child), she won gold in the 100 meter freestyle at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, her 14th win at these events. She then followed that up on August 4th by twice breaking her own American record in the 50 m freestyle, 26 years after she first set the American record at just 15 years old.

Torres has worked on television as a reporter and announcer for American networks such as NBC, ESPN, TNT, OLN and Fox News Channel. She now hosts the golf show the Clubhouse on the Resort Sports Network. She is also a sometime model, having appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1994.

Of course this explosion back onto the swimming scene and her “ripped” body have raised a few eyebrows. How, they say, at 41 years of age could she have done this?
She bore a child, was diagnosed with asthma, had recent knee and shoulder surgery, and arrived at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials posting faster times than she posted in her mid-20’s. Humm, something smells strangely steroid-like, the nay-sayers say.

I’m not ready to accuse her of anything other than magnificent talent and guts.
Torres qualified for the Olympic team by edging out a 25-year-old Natalie Coughlin by five one hundredths of a second – 53.78 to 53.83 – in an event in which Coughlin holds the American record. The critics and skeptics are going to use the “steroid” card, we know that.

Dara is quoted as saying:
“I’m so used to it now that it’s not even an issue,” Torres said of the doping suspicions that have dogged her in this latest Olympic comeback. “I just got drug tested and I can’t see them not coming out and at least blood testing me with that pilot program I’m involved with. That’s fine. Like I said (before), anyone who makes any accusations I take as a compliment.”

The fact that Torres is taking part in a voluntary U.S. Anti-Doping Agency program called Project Believe won’t quell the rumbling. Framed as USADA’s most vigorous testing regimen, Torres says her involvement has led to her blood and urine having been tested “12 to 15 times” since March.

Dara says:
“You can DNA test me, blood test me, urine test me, whatever you want to do,” Torres said in her first statements after arriving in Omaha. “Just test me because I want people to know that I am doing this right that I’m 40, 41 years old and I’m doing this and I’m clean and I want a clean sport. I swam against swimmers who were dirty my entire life and it’s just something I wouldn’t do.”

The doubters will doubt and Dara will swim.
This is a reality Torres can’t escape. So she moves on to Beijing on the fresh wings of a story that is almost too good to be true and certainly the stuff that Olympic Dreams are made of. And that might be the only thing her supporters and skeptics agree.
 
Go Dara!!