Dara Torres is a great sport. She's so happy for the gold and bronze medal winner and thrilled she won. She's also hot, and she's twice my age. Or close enough. -nobody
Son of a bitch, I missed it. Oh well guess I will have to hunt it down on youtube, rerun or something.
That would be Dara Torres, who is 41 and competed in 5 of the last 7 Olympics. She is the oldest female swimmer to compete in the Olympics. Ever. She is also the only US swimmer to ever compete in 5 Olympics. The oldest male swimmer on the team is 32. It's not exactly a "standard". I think there are many great athletes who did not choose to pursue their sports into their 30's 40's. Most of them, actually. Dara Torres. 41. She has won 11 medals total and may win another in the final race tonight (none individual golds). And it really is the exception. By far.
I've been trying a lot today to find a way. So far, no such luck. I guess we're stuck with the marathon.
I'm not sure it's even possible to go for 9 gold medals. Phelps record is probably safe for a long while. Spitz's mark stood for a good 35 years.
I actually was watching Sportscenter since I knew they'd mention it and apparently as the anchor and analyst Darren Woodsen were talking about the Miami-Jacksonville game, they were also watching the race live. Lucky bastards.
There's one. I have a feeling there might be a few others. I think that's who I was thinking of (as I realized tonight while watching her race), but as noted by Cali, there are others and I have a feeling those two aren't the only ones. Another great athlete tonight on the older side is Romania's Constantina Diṭă-Tomescu (age 38) who won the Women's Marathon by a HUGE margin and had that lead for a large portion of the race. She's also the oldest Olympic marathon winner in history (I believe for either gender). As a runner, I was deeply engrossed by her run today, but I'm guessing others weren't considering there has been no talk about it in this thread.
I watched since it was one of the few events NBC broadcast live. I was impressed by her win, especially since she ran around the stadium for ten minutes after she won; she had a lot left in the tank! I was also impressed with how Paula Radcliffe refused to drop out of the race, despite being in obvious pain. I guess she needed to get that Athens Olympics monkey off her back!
Constantina Diṭă-Tomescu is the Energizer Bunny! She just kept going and going and going! Damn, I hope I'm in that good of shape when I'm her age. I, too, was impressed by Radcliffe. And she only finished about 6 minutes after Constantina Diṭă-Tomesc, so that's not too bad. That being said, I'm still annoyed at the British writers who called her a quitter four years ago. I'd like to see them compete in a marathon.
I mentioned this in another thread, but when I saw how he did that, I thought to myself "the power requirements to do that have to be immense!", I mean, it's like he pulled every erg of energy from the air and just PLOW! J.
I was getting tired just watching her run, to be honest. She pulled ahead of the pack and kept pushing to the end, which was amazing. For Phelps, I think I chewed my nails a lot on that race. I was definitely nervous (I've had way too many times where the last thing someone needs is where they fall short). Since this was a team relay, it was even more nerve-racking. But they pulled through with a great race, getting the record and the gold.