Torres’ feel-good story too good?

OMAHA, Neb. – As Olympic stories go, it is an exclamation mark on an achievement that will spend the next two months being bent into a question mark.

Knowing that fact, Dara Torres spent part of Friday night shrugging off the doubt that is bound to settle on her chiseled shoulders over the next two months. At 41 years old and having qualified for her fifth Olympic team, the marble-physiqued Torres now owns potentially the most intriguing feel-good story line this side of Michael Phelps.

And with it, she also has materialized as the Olympian most likely to bear the brunt of suspicious success in the post-BALCO era.

At 41, she has done what most would have termed impossible since retiring (for the second time, no less) after the 2000 games: bear a child, get diagnosed with asthma, go through recent knee and shoulder surgeries, and arrive at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials posting faster times than in her mid-20s. Yet, when she touched a wall in the 100-meter freestyle Friday night, she squinted at digits that seemed downright impossible. Torres qualified for the Olympic team by edging out a 25-year-old Natalie Coughlin by five one hundredths of a second – 53.78 to 53.83 – in an event in which Coughlin holds the American record.

In an instant, we were given the light and dark side of an Olympic moon – with Torres becoming the symbol of warring beliefs. On one hand you had a baby-toting mother overcoming the longest of odds, providing a rallying cry for the middle aged and giving a booster shot to the ageless spirit of competition. On the other, you had the sinister raised eyebrow of unproven doping assumptions.

It’s a case study in “Can you believe she did that!” versus “Can you believe she did that?”

“I’m so used to it now that it’s not even an issue,” Torres said of the doping suspicions that have dogged her in this latest Olympic comeback. “I just got drug tested and I can’t see them not coming out and at least blood testing me with that pilot program I’m involved with. That’s fine. Like I said (before), anyone who makes any accusations I take as a compliment. “

Certainly the suspicions will come, even with Torres taking part in a special U.S. Anti-Doping Agency program called Project Believe. Framed as USADA’s most vigorous testing regimen, Torres says her involvement has led to her blood and urine having been tested “12 to 15 times” since March.

But that’s a price she says she’s willing to pay as part of what she calls her “open book” policy with testing. A policy that has had her going on the offensive against any doping insinuations since her first statements at these trials.

“You can DNA test me, blood test me, urine test me, whatever you want to do,” Torres said in her first statements after arriving in Omaha. “Just test me because I want people to know that I am doing this right, that I’m 40, 41 years old and I’m doing this and I’m clean and I want a clean sport. I swam against swimmers who were dirty my entire life and it’s just something I wouldn’t do.”

Unfortunately for Torres, she’s carving out new territory in unforgiving terrain. Not only is she struggling against an abyss of cynicism created by a federal BALCO doping investigation (which implicated several Olympic athletes), her win comes off some strong remarks from Olympic gold medalist Gary Hall Jr. Hall expressed disgust with USADA earlier this week, suggesting that it is federal investigations – not Olympic drug testing – that are catching unscrupulous cheats.

“To think that it doesn’t exist is foolish,” Hall said. “All doping scandals are not a direct result of positive tests. They’re usually somebody getting caught by some other means. I don’t think that we can rely on a doping agency to really catch the people that are so far ahead of where the testing is.”

It’s that kind of thinking, combined with the onslaught of broken world records and influx of money in the swimming community, that is helping to breed questions about doping in the sport. And that sharpening microscope comes at a time when Torres has just achieved one of the most unlikely feats. She has a fierce and dedicated fan base rallied behind her, a battery of clean drug tests and a coach who has bitter memories of past doping scandals.

“My wife swam against the East Germans,” said Torres’ coach, Michael Lohberg. “She swam on the West German national team, and we knew (about doping) all the time. She lost a lot of medals and those kinds of things.”

But as the oldest female swimming qualifier in Olympic history – and in a sport that has found its lifeblood in youth – Torres will be freestyling to Beijing with critics sitting on her back. She is hurt by the fact that there is almost zero precedent for athletes dramatically improving their swimming times in their 30s, let alone at 41. Not to mention an athlete that has had three knee surgeries and a rotator cuff repaired. Then there is an army of bloggers close to the swimming community laying out intricate cases suggesting that Torres must be doping.

And what about her ardent denials and “open book” testing policies? Skeptics will point to the fact that many other athletes put up similar fronts – Marion Jones, for one – and are now in prison or banned from competition for life for their roles in doping scandals. Even Torres can’t deny this.

“Unfortunately, there have been athletes in the past who’ve sat there and looked everyone in the eyes and said, ‘I have not taken drugs,’ and now they’re either in jail or being indicted,” Torres said. “You are now guilty until proven innocent.”

For a segment of swimming critics, this is a reality Torres can’t escape. So she moves on to Beijing hoisting a story that seems almost too good to be true. And that might be the only thing her supporters and skeptics agree upon.