Dara Torres has won twelve Olympic medals, four gold medals, four silver
medals, and four bronze medals. She won five won in the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
At the time she was 33 and the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic Swim Team.
Dara Torres was born in Florida, but grew up in California; she is the daughter of Edward Torres and Marylu Kauder. She has four brothers and one sister. She started swimming when she was young. Torres attended the Westlake School for Girls, where she set California Interscholastic Federation records that remain to this day. Dara went to the University of Florida. Her daughter Tessa was born in April of 2006.
She played volleyball and basketball before she did swimming. She was the first swimmer from the United State to compete in five Olympics Games: 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2008.
On August 1, 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.
Dara was the first athlete to appear as a model for the Sports illustrated Swimsuit Edition, she has had a career in broadcasting. In the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China she became the oldest medalist in the history of Olympic swimming.
Dara was quoted in an article for the Sun Sentinel, "I have done so many cool things since Beijing it's hard to pick out just one, but I think throwing out the first pitch was pretty unbelievable because it reminded me of my dad," Torres said. Torres' father, Edward, lost his battle with colon cancer before the Olympic Trials. "My dad worked at Yankee Stadium when he was a kid and Babe Ruth was playing," Torres said.
Dara wrote a book called Age is Just a Number, it is due to be published in April 2009.
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