E-mail a friendDara Torres
airdate April 16, 2009
Dara Torres shattered expectations and the record book when she made her fifth U.S. Olympic team in Beijing. Her comeback to competitive swimming, at age 41, resulted in three silver medals, bringing her lifetime medal count to 12. She also set three world records. She's since made a name as a TV commentator and print model. In her book, Age Is Just a Number, Torres reflects on being an older athlete in a younger athletes' game. Not resting on her laurels, she's training for the '09 World Championships in Rome.
Olympic swimmer admits to having good genes, but says people shouldn't compare themselves to her. (:57)
Full interview. (11:31)
Dara Torres
Tavis: Dara Torres is a 12-time Olympic medalist who became the oldest Olympic swimming medalist in history at last year's Beijing Summer Games. All told, she's competed now in five Olympic Games dating back to 1984. Her new book is called "Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage of Your Life." Dara, nice to have you on the program.
Dara Torres: Thanks for having me here, Tavis.
Tavis: I was teasing my staff - I said, "I hope she wears a shirt today." (Laughter) Because you're hot and all that, but every time you show your abs, I just feel - the over-40 crowd, I just feel embarrassed.
Torres: It's supposed to be an inspiration.
Tavis: No, no, no, no, it's not. I am embarrassed when I see you take your shirt off. I'm glad to have you on the program.
Torres: Thank you.
Tavis: Let me start by asking whether or not you are done yet - are you done yet?
Torres: I don't know.
Tavis: Gee whiz. (Laughs) You don't know?
Torres: Well, I thought I was in Beijing, and the reporters are asking me. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I'm done; I'll let the kids swim." And then about a week after I got home from Beijing I got (unintelligible) exercise. I'm like, "I really still like to eat, and so I want to swim and be able to eat what I'm used to eating." And it felt pretty good.
I'm like, oh, this is great. And then I started thinking, well, world championships is this summer, and what if I just swim for exercise and possibly go for world championships? And maybe, like, three days later I'm like, oh, forget it - I'm just going to keep swimming. So I don't know.
Tavis: That's funny. Describe for me as best you can what it feels like to be 41, competing against a 16-year-old.
Torres: I don't think about it. I don't stand up there and say, oh -
Tavis: You honestly don't?
Torres: No. The only thing I could see is, like, if I walk into what's called the ready room, where the swimmers hang out before you swim, and you see those young kids just freaking out. Then I know I'm competing against young kids. But when I'm standing up on the blocks, I don't even think about it. I'm just okay, who are my racers? And this is who I'm racing against. It's not the age thing.
Tavis: What has been the primary driver for you as you have gotten older?
Torres: I think I just love the sport and I love competing and I feel like I haven't reached my peak yet. I swam at a meet about a month and a half ago and did one of my best times ever. And so I think I'm going to keep going until either my body gives out or I've reached my peak and start going downhill pretty quick.
Tavis: Do you think, with all the advice that you offer in the book, that where your physical fitness is concerned, that most of us can get anywhere near that by hard work, or are you willing to admit to me that this is a pretty special specimen here?
Torres: All right. Well, first of all, I definitely have the genes. I have a brother, he works out very hard but we look exactly alike as far as our bodies go. But you have to remember I do this for a living. It's not like I sit here and work like you do all day and then try to go out and work out and look like I do. This is what I do for a living, so I don't think it's really realistic for someone to look like I do unless they put in the number of hours that I do.
Tavis: See, there's that picture.
Torres: Oh, great. (Laughs)
Tavis: That's the picture that is embarrassing to the rest of us who are over 40. Great photo, though - great photo.
Torres: Thank you.
Tavis: The way you found a way to stay focused with all that has gone around around you while you were preparing for these - your dad being sick, the baby, twice divorced - how do you stay focused when all this stuff is swirling around you?
Torres: Well, you know what? I'm just like everyone else - you go through your ups and downs and your trials and tribulations and you learn from your mistakes. I've had a lot of ups and downs in my life, and the emotional highs and lows that you go through with losing someone so close to you, like my father - it's tough, but it makes you stronger and it just makes you appreciate things more.
Tavis: What made you want to write this?
Torres: I really didn't want to write a book, and after I made the Olympic team I had so many people coming up to me, "Oh, when's your book coming out?" I'm like, "What book?" And after people saying that for so long and so many times, I finally was, like, you know what? I guess I better write a book. And I really wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be where everyone could relate to it and not just an elite athlete, and I wanted to people to realize that we go through what everyone else goes through.
Even though mine's swim-related, I had the jealousies with another woman, I had, as far as training goes, to deal with my father's death, I had bulimia. It's just what other people go through. It's just I went through mine through my swimming career.
Tavis: You're very courageous and very open to talk about your bulimia. Tell me about it.
Torres: Oy - it was probably the darkest point of my life. I wasn't myself. Once I finally got over it and my mom was, like, "Oh, it's so good to have you back," I was happy again. It's just one of these things where our coach wanted us to look a certain way and my body couldn't do that.
I was going through my womanhood stages, and I looked at food and I gained weight. And it's not to say I was heavy, but I just wasn't lean like I am now. And the philosophy was the more lean you look on the starting blocks, the more intimidated your competitors will be.
So I couldn't do it by just starving myself, and someone had shown myself and a couple of other girls what bingeing and purging was and I just got into the routine of it. And unfortunately it took about five years to get over it.
Tavis: How'd you come out of it?
Torres: I was lucky. I'm a very goal-oriented person and I went to get help. I was seeing a psychiatrist and it helped a little bit, but it didn't just make me get over it. And then I decided I wanted to get back and swim. When I swam in the '88 Olympics is when it was full force, my eating disorder, and this was the '92 Olympic Games.
I thought, you know what, if I'm going to do this, I need to do it the right way. And I just stopped.
Tavis: Take me back to before '84, when you first started swimming as an Olympian. What are your earliest memories, thoughts, about swimming at this elite level? When did the Olympics become a goal for you?
Torres: I was one of these kids that everyone hated because I wouldn't train for weeks, I'd get up and stay on the starting blocks, swim a race and be fast and break age group records. And so when I was probably just hit my teens, 13, 14 years old, I broke my first national title and - won my first national title, and then when I was 15 broke a world record.
And that's when it sort of hit me - like, wow, I think I can possibly make the Olympic team. I want to try and train for that.
Tavis: How do you rate or rank the five that you have participated in? Or is that impossible to do?
Torres: It's very hard because each one had a different experience. I think my worse one was probably - and not because of the placings, but my worst experience was in Seoul, Korea, because that's when my eating disorder was in full force.
But I would have to say that this last one was probably my favorite. You see things much differently through the eyes of a 41-year-old and appreciate it more. This is one that I can share with my daughter, because she was alive and will one day get to see all these pictures, and I can talk to her about it. So this will probably be my favorite one, in '08.
Tavis: How does having a kid change, adjust, or reformulate your career goals in swimming, if at all?
Torres: Well, it makes you realize that swimming's not the most important thing in your life. And when you're an athlete growing up and going through all the elite competitions, you think that that event or your sport is the most important thing in the world, and it's not. And I think that's a difference that I saw in myself, compared to a lot of the younger athletes that I was racing against.
Tavis: What have you most taken from international competition or the relationships developed therein?
Torres: Swimming is very much a community, and when I got to Beijing I was looking at all the swimmers, and you think of the countries, not the swimmers. And you realize, wow, these kids, they're in college with you - not with me, but with a lot of the other kids. (Laughter)
Tavis: You've been out for a few years now.
Torres: Yeah, yeah. They probably weren't born when I was in college. And you just realize that it's just such a great community, that it's not really as big as what everyone thinks when you think of all the different countries and everything. It's just a very close-knit community.
Tavis: This book, if it's about anything - as the title suggests, age is just a number - it's really about positioning yourself and believing that at any point in your life you can, if I can put it this way, make a comeback.
There are so many people, as I think now about this conversation, you made the comparison earlier to the fact that swimmers and athletes, like everyday people, you go through the same things we go through. But there are going to be a lot of people coming out of this economy who are going to have to position themselves and find the reason to believe that they can make a comeback, no matter what age they are. A lot of folk up in age are getting laid off and downsized.
Your best advice for believing and positioning yourself to make a comeback, even if you're not an Olympic swimmer?
Torres: Is to never stop believing. And when I decided to make my comeback, one of the first things I thought was that I could win an Olympic gold medal. Whether it was realistic or not, I thought that way. And because I had that ambition inside of me I worked as hard as I can to try to reach that goal. And I think that's the best advice that I can give.
Tavis: And I'll take it. A lot more good advice in her new book. Dara Torres' book is called "Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage of Your Life." Dara, congrats on all of the accomplishments so far - and I say so far just in case you ain't done yet - but I'm glad to have you on the program. (Laughter)
Torres: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Tavis: Take care of yourself.
Torres: Thank you.
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