Edward torres and marylu kauder biography

Hall Of Fame Bio #

The spider came dancing down the video screen and Dara Torres zapped it. Ptnnng! Ptnnng! Whatever little troll or mushroom man streamed by she knocked it dead, and Rowdy Gaines seemed awestruck. This was Centipede, by Atari, his game. Gaines, 25, the fastest meter freestyler in the world, had the moves for it, a sprinter's quickness. But Torres, 17, the women's champ in the meter free, has "catlike reflexes," as Mark Schubert, her coach at the Mission Viejo swim club, says. "She has that rare ability to shift her weight at the instant before the gun goes off."

Torres's next video victim didn't have that ability. It was the Centipede itself, for which the game was named. Ptnnng! Ptnnng! It didn't have a chance. Neither did Gaines. "My God," he called out, "you've passed my alltime best score."

Torres and Gaines played their game of Centipede in March in Indianapolis, between sessions of the national indoor championships. The day before, Torres had won at 50 meters in , only of a second off her American-record and world-best time, and the 10th best in history. In the previous two years she had also achieved the third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-best times, and she was still a month short of her 17th birthday. But a world best isn't a world record. There are none in the 50; the distance isn't contested at international meets, and to swim at the Los Angeles Olympics, Torres would have to step up her training and qualify for the meter free at the U.S. trials later this month in Indianapolis. And so for the past few months Torres has been working very hard.

She does have one very special physical advantage over much of her swimming and video games competition, an unusually high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fiber, the kind that is suited to explosive, or sprint, activity. Do fast-twitch muscle and "catlike" reflexes go together? "Obviously," says Schubert. Last year muscle biopsies were done on Torres and 24 other Mission Viejo swimm

BEIJING — Dara Torres was born April 15, , in Los Angeles, two weeks before a blessed event was held in Las Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel: the wedding of Elvis Presley and his bride, Priscilla.

Her father, Eddie Torres, bought the Aladdin (in a partnership with Wayne Newton) 13 years later. By then his daughter the swim prodigy was a fixture in the pools of Beverly Hills, including the one in the Torres family’s sprawling bath home there.

He meant a great deal to Dara way back then. He still does.

She invokes his name on her website to this day, on the verge of unprecedented Olympic greatness, saying, “I look deep inside my soul and wonder what my father would tell me.”

She thought of her dad in Omaha last month when she, at 41, became our oldest swimming Olympian ever.

“I was feeling him with me in that race,” Dara said, adding that she later tried to avert her gaze because those drops spilling down her cheeks were not from the pool.

And the nerves are still there for her, even at this age.

When she emerged from Friday night’s prelims at the Water Cube in the meter freestyle, the first test in Beijing for this queen mother of the U.S. swim team, Torres grinned sheepishly and confessed, “I had knots in my stomach all morning.”

The outside of her stomach you’ve seen. It has been photographed and remarked upon for weeks now, this Greek-goddess midsection of hers, a torso to die for with abs that ripple like the armor of Batman’s suit.

A year-old, Cate Campbell, actually swam faster than Torres, who was winning medals at Olympic Games before the young Australian was born.

“She’s an amazing woman,” Campbell said. “I’m not going to be swimming when I’m No way.”

Torres, who won her semifinal heat today in seconds, was just like her once.

She was a teenager and the Olympics were being staged in her hometown. Dara already had been a competitive swimmer at 8, broken a world record at 14 and made a name for herself at Wes

American swimmer (born )

For the politician, see Dara Torre.

Dara Grace Torres (born April 15, ) is an American former competitive swimmer, who is a time Olympic medalist and former world record-holder in three events. Torres is the first swimmer to represent the United States in five Olympic Games (, , , and ), and at age 41, the oldest swimmer to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team. At the Summer Olympics, she competed in the meter freestyle, 4×meter medley relay, and 4×meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.

Torres won 12 Olympic medals (four gold, four silver, four bronze), at the time this was the most Olympic women's swimming medals, tied with fellow American Jenny Thompson. Torres won five medals at the Summer Olympics, when at age 33, she was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic swim team. She won at least one medal in each of the five Olympics in which she competed.

Early years

Torres was born on April 15, , to a family in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Edward Torres, and Marylu Kauder. Her father was a real estate developer and casino owner; her mother Marylu was a former American model. Torres grew up in Beverly Hills, California, the fifth of six children and the older of two girls. As a seven-year-old, she followed in the footsteps of her older brothers by joining their community YMCA for swimming practice; afterward, she signed up for the swimming club in Culver City to train. At 14, she won the national open championship in the yard freestyle by defeating the then-current champion, Jill Sterkel, a college junior.

She attended the Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake School), and competed for the Westlake swim team under coach Alison Esses from the seventh grade through her sophomore year in high school. She was also a member of the Westlake basketball, gymnastics, and vo