by Sharon Robb. Originally posted here. Reposted with kind permission.
Ageless Dara Torres is ready to shake the rust off.
The South Florida Aquatic Club's five-time Olympian will join twelve of her teammates at the Feb. 18-21 Missouri Grand Prix in Columbia, Mo.
It will be the 43-year-old's first meet since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and state-of-the-art surgery on her left knee.
Torres will compete only in the 50-meter freestyle, the event she missed the Olympic gold medal by a finger nail tip (1/100ths of a second).
At age 41, she was the oldest Olympic swimming medalist after bringing home three silver medals, the only swimmer to win a medal in five Olympics and oldest U.S. swimmer to compete in five Games.
"She is ahead of schedule according to her doctor and trainers," said SOFLO co-head coach Bruno Darzi. "She is ready for her first meet."
Originally, SOFLO six-time Olympic coach Michael Lohberg and her Calgary, Canada-based strength and conditioning coach Andy O'Brien, had scheduled the March 3-5 Florida Gold Coast Senior Championships at Plantation Central Park for her first meet.
"She will have fun with this," Lohberg said. "We will see what she can do. If she reacts well, then we will know we are on the right track. If not, it's been a heck of a ride."
O'Brien, 33, Director of Sport Performance at the Edge School's Duckett Performance Centre, has been visiting Torres every month to check on her progress. O'Brien was recently selected to The Hockey News' Top 40 Under 40 list.
"Every time Dara switches a phase that she is going through I will come in and do an assessment and I'll take a look at her body biomechanically and find out what she needs to work on to stay balanced and how she is improving in terms of her strength," O'Brien said.
"Then I will design her next phase and teach it to her. We videotape the drills that she is doing and provide her with the tape. Then I leave and she continues on her own with the people here at the club to help and supervise her."
At Beijing, Torres competed despite severe pain. She wasn't able to chase her daughter Tessa Grace around or walk up stairs without pain.
Reknowned surgeon Dr. Tom Minas of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said her knee was causing a "career-ending problem."
Torres underwent a procedure that uses biotechnology to regrow her own cartilage cells by implanting them in her knee with hopes or repairing it back to health.
Minas performed a radical procedure Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) on Torres. He removed 10,000 cartilage cells from Torres' knee. They were sent to a lab and grown for several weeks into 50 million cells.
During a 3 ½-hour surgery Torres' knee was opened and Minas sewed a synthetic patch over the pothole where two cartilages were missing and then the 50 million cells were injected to harden and grow into healthy cartilage.
After taking a year off and six weeks after surgery, Torres was back in the pool with no kicking. Before that, she started working out following O'Brien's training plan to regain strength in her legs.
Torres would be 45 if she makes her sixth Olympic team. The idea that someone could compete in the Olympics at 45 is inconceivable to most but not those in the swimming world who have grown up with Torres and understands her steely determination not to mention her love for her daughter who is now old enough to understand the history her mom is making.
Since the end of 2008, Torres has had thumb surgery, three knee operations and shoulder procedure and surgery. She's had more than 15 orthopedic surgeries.
"I don't know what my body can do," Torres said. "I don't know if it will hold on for two years going for 2012, but why not give it a try?"
"It's fun being back again," Torres said. "It depends on what my body dictates. Now that I am a little bit older, it's going to be even harder than when I was 41."
When she steps on the blocks for the first time in more than two years, Torres will be surrounded by several friendly faces in the stands. Twelve SOFLO swimmers, from up-and-comers to Olympians will compete during the four-day Missouri meet.
They are two-time Olympians Alia Atkinson and Vlad Polyakov, Arlene Semeco, Leo Andara, Julie Stupp, Jessie Alcaide, Lindsey McKnight, Emily Kopas, Doug Ramos, Marc Rojas, and Italians Valerio Rasi and Gianpaolo Barelli. Two other swimmers, Brandon Goldman and Keegan Boisson-Yates may also compete if they make their cuts.
The Missouri Grand Prix is the third stop of the USA swimming Grand Prix Series seven-meet series. Race footage will be broadcast by Universal Sports and online at www.usaswimming.org.
