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Just 15 months after having a child, Torres won the 100-meter freestyle Wednesday night at the U.S. National Championships to establish herself as a legitimate contender for a fifth trip to the Olympics.
"I really wasn't expecting this," Torres said while sprawled out on the floor of the media room, getting an impromptu massage. "Now the bar is raised a little higher. I have to kind of change my goals."
Torres shared top billing with Phelps, who won the 200 backstroke with the third-fastest time in history, just short of the world record set four months ago by fellow American Ryan Lochte.
At least Lochte won't have to worry about Phelps in the 200 back at Beijing
-- it's not among eight events he's expected to swim in his second attempt to break Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals.
"I can't be disappointed, even though I was pretty close," Phelps said. "That's what keeps me hungry: to be so close and not achieve it."
Phelps finished more than two seconds ahead of everyone else in a field, including Lochte, while capturing the 33rd national title of his career. He touched with a time of 1 minute, 54.65 seconds, just off the mark of 1:54.32 that Lochte set at the world championships.
Aaron Peirsol is the only other swimmer to go faster than Phelps in the 200 back at 1:54.44, the previous world record.
"Just another Michael moment basically," said his coach, Bob Bowman. "We'd like for him to come back one day and get that record. But it probably goes to the back burner in the short term."
Clearly not in top form, Lochte struggled to a fourth-place finish at 1:59.11.
Torres won the 14th national title of her long career more than a quarter-century after the first, as a 14-year-old in 1982. Two years later, she made her first Olympic appearance at the Los Angeles Games.
Now, flash ahead a couple of decades.
A year after coming out of retirement, Torres posted the sixth-fastest time in U.S. history, 54.45, and was just two-hundredths off her personal best, set in 2000.
She's already working on some age jokes that should play well in Beijing. Asked about her first national title, Torres quipped, "I don't think I remember it. When you get old, you lose your memory."
Someone pointed out that the men's 100 free champion was 19-year-old David Walters, who beat out a strong field that included 50 free world champion Ben Wildman-Tobriner and South African stars Roland Schoeman and Ryk Neethling.
"He's my son," Torres said of Walters. "Well, he could be."
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He's not the only competitor young enough to be Torres' child. The finals of the 100 free included three teenagers and three 21-year-olds.
"She's absolutely amazing," said 16-year-old Caitlin Leverenz, who didn't race against Torres but felt honored to warm up in the same lane during the morning. "I watched her push off from the wall and her streamline is one of the fastest in the world
-- and she's like 40 years old. I'm thinking, 'Wait, this is an old lady.' I'm just kidding. This is a swimming legend."
No argument there.
Torres was the first American to swim in four Olympics and her trophy case is packed with nine medals: four gold, one silver and four bronze. She's already pulled off one improbable comeback, stepping out of retirement to claim five medals in Sydney. At 33, she became the oldest U.S. swimmer ever to win Olympic gold.
She also knows that plenty of people were suspicious of her performance Down Under, figuring that it must have been aided by performance-enhancing drugs.
"It's too bad that people in the past used drugs," Torres said, "so when someone does something that's a little out of the ordinary, they get tainted too."
Looking to silence any whispers this time around, she went to USA Swimming and asked to be subjected to extra testing, including blood work. In the past six weeks, Torres has been tested three times.
"It's a pain," she said, "but it's worth it for all the naysayers out there. Here are all my drug tests and they're all negative. Those guys can say what they want, but here are the facts."
Walters won the 100 free in 48.96, edging Neethling by two-hundreds of a second. Schoeman was sixth at 49.15.
Katie Hoff, trying out an event that she may add to her Olympic trials program, won the women's 200 backstroke. She coasted to the wall in 2:10.31, nearly a second ahead of runner-up Mary Descenza.
Hoff wants to add a fifth individual event for the trials and she's also considering the 800 free. She finished second in that race on Tuesday, just behind world champion Kate Ziegler.
"We'll just have to see which one is best over the next year," Hoff said. "I definitely won't be doing them both."
Lochte did win the men's 400 individual medley, largely because world record holder Phelps skipped the event at this meet. Leverenz won the women's 400 IM for her first national title.
But this night belonged to Torres and Phelps.
[Associated Press;
by Paul Newberry]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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