Older women who inspire the hell out of me

You go, Dara! Awesome….

I turn 50 this year — at 40, I was still coaching my kids in soccer, and my introduction to 40 was tearing the heck out of my hamstring playing in a parents versus kids game one weekend. So I’m really impressed when someone close to my age is still out there kicking ass.

Torres, 41, makes record 5th Olympic swim team

Natalie Coughlin is 25 years old, an elder stateswoman of swimming.
Dara Torres wears goggles that are older than Coughlin.
Torres is 41. In swimming, that’s not old, that’s Pleistocene.
Torres swam in her first Olympic Games in 1984. Last year, she came out of a seven-year retirement, practically stepping out of a museum display case, to take a shot at making her fifth U.S. Olympic team at this week’s U.S. trials.
“The idea,” said Michael Lohberg, Torres’ coach for the past year, “was to do something that hasn’t been done before – getting an old lady on the Olympic team.”
Mission accomplished. Friday night, the old lady made the team by beating Coughlin to win the 100-meter freestyle. She now stands alone in history, the only five-time Olympic swimmer.
“I’m ecstatic, I can’t believe it,” Torres said after the race.
A year ago, Torres and Lohberg felt that if the stars were aligned, if Torres’ body held up, she might have a shot at a top-six finish in the 100-meter freestyle here, earning a berth on the 400-meter freestyle relay team (the two extra swimmers swim in preliminary heats).
They were in this for the adventure. For the rest of us, it would be a nice story: Four-time Olympian, winner of nine medals (four gold), gives swimming a golden nostalgia moment.
Torres has blown that syrupy story out of the water. She has shocked herself and her coach. She is in Omaha kicking butt and taking names.