Product Description
From legendary Olympic gold medalist Dara Torres comes a motivational, inspirational memoir about staying fit, aging gracefully, and pursuing your dreams.

Dara Torres captured the hearts and minds of Americans of all ages when she launched her Olympic comeback as a new mother at the age of forty-one—years after she had retired from competitive swimming and eight years since her last Olympics. When she took three silver medals in Beijing—including a heartbreaking .01-second finish behind the gold medalist in the women’s 50-meter freestyle—America loved her all the more for her astonishing achievement and her good-natured acceptance of the results.

Now, in Age Is Just a Number, Dara reveals how the dream of an Olympic comeback first came to her—when she was months into her first, hard-won pregnancy. With humor and candor, Dara recounts how she returned to serious training—while nursing her infant daughter and contending with her beloved father’s long battle with cancer.

Dara talks frankly about diving back in for this comeback; about being an older athlete in a younger athletes’ game; about competition, doubt, and belief; about working through pain and uncertainty; and finally—about seizing the moment and, most important, never giving up. A truly self-made legend, her story will resonate with women of all ages—and with anyone daring to entertain a seemingly impossible dream. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Great Meeting You, Dara!!
Very focused, very driven, very compulsive, very successful.This is Dara Torres.But she is also from a very wealthy family; and is blessed with unlimited support in every way.Her age may be "just a number", but without all the good fortune, I am not sure anyone at any age, could accomplish what she did, especially with a small child.The main message here is YOU CAN....but you have to have an unbeievable support system first.

Amazing Story of older athlete
I am a masters swimmer, so I found it inspiring enough about her swimming so successfully at 41 years old. Her story is much more, showing the hard work, determination, and persistence in the face of adversity. Well-written, although the chronology does skip around a bit, but the story is so compelling. It is about setting goals, practice, hard work, keeping a positive attitude, all the keys my coach has been reminding me about.

Disappointing
First off, the title is misleading - this is not a motivational or a how-to book. It's a memoir. I knew this beforehand so it wasn't an issue but others could be confused. Dara Torres won three silver medals at the 2008 Olympics - an incredible achievement, especially since she was 41 at the time. I was curious about her story and hoping to be inspired at the same time. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the poor writing (even with the help of a co-writer) and the extremely disorganized chapters. There were also strange gaps. For example, she goes into detail about her first marriage and subsequent divorce but later in the book only mentions in passing that she got married and divorced to someone else in the meantime. (I'm not saying that she's obliged to provide personal info but the inconsistency was odd). I wanted to know how, after not swimming for 7 years (literally not a single lap) she launched straight into training with her team. Wouldn't she be extremely out of practice? This is never addressed. I ended up feeling very frustrated.This could have been so much more.

AGE IS JUST A NUMBER BY DARA TORRES
I LIKED THIS BOOK VERY MUCH AS DID MY GRANDAUGHTER WHO IS A COLLEGE SWIMMER...HOWEVER SHE HAS A KINDLE AND WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE MS. TORRES BOOKS TO BE TEXT TO SPEECH AS THIS WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL TO HER. SEE IF THIS CAN BE ARRANGED. WE ARE AWAITING THE DELIVERY OF MS. TORRES NEW BOOK AND ARE HOPING IT WILL BE TEXT TO SPEECH. THANK YOU...MRS. M

Dara Torres, Age is just a number an excellent book!!!
This is a very good book, the author is a well recognized swimmer and is one of the bests of all time for what she has achieved. ... Read more