The 44-year-old sprinter, trying to qualify for her sixth Olympics in London next year, returned to competition in February after 16 months away because of major knee surgery.
“I thought I would get it quick,” she said Thursday. “I only took a year off—from ’92 to ’99, I took seven years off. I’m thinking, `This can’t be that bad.’ But it was a tough year last year. I didn’t feel like myself when I was training. I just had to keep the confidence.”
Torres was already a modern marvel when she won a silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle at age 41 at the 2008 Games. She was training about 30,000 yards a week in the lead-up to Beijing, an unusually low number for an elite swimmer. These days, it’s more like 21,000-25,000 yards—with two days off—as she makes sure her body has enough time to recover.
“Dry land” workouts remain a major part of her training, though now she can’t do certain leg exercises because of her knee.
Torres finds her nutritional approach has come full circle. When she was first coming up—she won the first of four Olympic gold medals in 1984—it was all about carb-loading. Carbs then went out of style, but as she gets older, Torres realizes she needs more of them.
“My body doesn’t have the fuel that it had when I used to swim,” said Torres, who was in New York on Thursday to serve as a coach for the day at a Brooklyn YMCA for sponsor Bengay. “I need to refuel as I’m training.”
Torres was struggling to finish her races when she first came back from her latest layoff. But her times kept improving, and that buoyed her confidence.
Now she just needs to get some more racing under her belt this fall.
“You’d think after so many years I’d know how to race,” Torres said, “but you need to be in that environment.”
Even after all she’s gone through to come back yet again, Torres insists she’ll head into the U.S. Olympic trials at age 45 in June with no expectations.
“I like challenges,” she said. “It’s kind of fun, and just kick back and see what happens.”
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