Dara Torres : Ask Biography

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Dara Grace Torres (born April 15, 1967) is an American international swimmer and a twelve-time Olympic medalist. Torres was the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008), and, at age 41, the oldest swimmer ever to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she competed in the 50-meter freestyle, 4x100-meter medley relay, and 4x100-meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.

Torres has won twelve Olympic medals (four gold, four silver, four bronze), five of which she won in the 2000 Summer Olympics, when at age 33, she was the oldest member of the 2000 U.S. Olympic Swim Team. She has also won at least one medal in each of the five Olympics in which she has competed, making her one of only a handful of Olympians to earn medals in five different Games.

On August 1, 2007, at age 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 national championship. On August 4, she broke her own American record in the 50-meter freestyle, 26 years after she first set the American record at just 15 years old.