Techni News Araby تقني نيوز عربي

 

Dara Torres, Nastia Liukin show why Olympians keep trying

Why we love the Olympic Games is why some can't stand the pressure of getting to them. Yet every four years, they try, over and over again.

Dara Torres, a 45-year-old 12-time Olympic medalist, had made it look so easy for so long in five Olympics: 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008. She had made three of those Olympic teams before budding 17-year-old superstar Missy Franklin was born.

But Monday night at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, she just missed making it six, finishing fourth in the 50-meter freestyle in 24.82 seconds, nine-hundredths from second place and a trip to London.

    PHOTOS: Top shots from U.S. Olympic trials

We think everything's possible at any age these days. Women giving birth in their late 40s or early 50s. A former president, George H.W. Bush, sky-diving to celebrate his 85th birthday. Tom Watson nearly winning the British Open in 2009 at 59. Pitcher Jamie Moyer winning Major League Baseball games in his late 40s.

We should remember that these feats are not the norm — comebacks are quite rare in sports.

On Sunday, in the same half-hour that Torres qualified third fastest in the 50 freestyle at the trials, 22-year-old 2008 Olympic women's gymnastics all-around gold medalist Nastia Liukin thudded to the mats, face first, when her hands gave way on the uneven bars, her specialty.

That very same evening, 31-year-old swimmer Anthony Ervin returned after a 12-year absence to make the U.S. team in the men's 50 freestyle, while 18-year-old gymnast Rebecca Bross, competing with a gruesome scar snaking along her right kneecap, made three mistakes on the bars, including one devastating fall, that likely ended her career.

And yet there stood Torres, who nearly made her sixth Olympic team 28 years after she made her first.

Afterward, she said she would retire.

"I think tonight it will probably sink in a little more," she said Monday. "I was very emotional before my swim. I was putting my suit on with my trainer, Anne Tierney, and we started crying."

Even though she has hardly had it easy, undergoing intricate shoulder and knee surgeries after winning three silver medals at the Beijing Games, Torres is everything the "older" gymnasts could not be. Though they are less than half Torres' age, they found themselves betrayed by time and their bodies in a sport that often places elite athletes on the discard pile before they graduate from high school.

A 13-minute span Sunday night in San Jose was especially devastating to two of the sport's recent stars. Liukin, attempting a late comeback after enjoying the spoils of victory after Beijing, gamely continued with her routine after her jarring full-body slam when her hands couldn't hold on to the bar. She finished proudly, never shedding a tear. Later, she performed a strong balance beam routine and sent off members of the 2012 Olympic team — the team she did not make — with words of support and wisdom.

Gymnastics is part sport, part high-wire act, and Liukin was not the only gymnast who fell Sunday night. After Bross' third miscue, her coach, Valeri Liukin — Nastia's father — told her it was time to stop. Bross has a bushel-barrel of world championship medals but had never made an Olympic team, hampered by injuries in 2008 and again this time. Because gymnastics favors the tiniest, youngest, most nimble bodies, Bross is almost certain to never have another chance.

It's by the nature of what they do, trying for the pinnacle of their sport every four years, not every year, that Olympians develop a stunning sense of perspective. And so it was with Liukin.

"I was at the peak of my career four years ago," she said, "and if anybody would have ever told me in 2008 that you would have been competing in the 2012 Olympic trials, I probably wouldn't have believed them."

Just being there, it turns out, was a victory in itself.

Posted in: فضاء EN