KEY POINTS:
If you ever wanted to gauge whether the drugs scandals of recent times are reaching deep into the consciousness of perhaps the worst dopers in the world - no, not China; the US - you just have to read some of the coverage of the 41-year-old 'wondermum' Dara Torres.
She is the US swimmer who gobsmacked the Olympic trials and US swimming by turning up ostensibly to win a spot in a relay team - but who won the 50m and 100m freestyle sprints to book a place in Beijing. That's Beijing, 2008. That's 24 years after Torres' first Olympics, in Los Angeles in 1984.
She broke the US record, setting a mark of 24.25s in the 50m. Her 100m swim saw her upset US champion Natalie Coughlin, who won five medals (including two gold) at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Torres is swimming faster now than she did 20 years ago - a remarkable feat in sprint events where fast-twitch fibres fade young.
Not that she is without talent nor is she a Janine-come-lately - she has won nine Olympics medals over four Olympic games, Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona and Sydney: (four gold - all in relays), one silver (relay) and four bronze (including one each in the 50m and 100m freestyle in the 2000 Sydney Olympics).
She was the oldest swimmer (at 33) in the US team in Sydney; she'd been retired for six years before those games and she promptly retired again after Sydney.
She came out of retirement, this white-toothed, blondly strapping, former model, TV reporter and presenter, after giving birth to her daughter, now aged two. It is a story the likes of which makes Americans proud - and their media reach for the loudest of trumpets.
Fair enough. It is an astounding achievement. In 1984, Torres was swimming 25.61s for the 50m. Now it's 24.25s. In 1984, she swam 56.36s in the 100m; now 54.45s. Most of this reduction in times, incidentally, was done before Speedo's new wonder suit came out. It is unheard of.
Scientifically, such progressions should not be happening.
The strength and aerobic demands on swimmers at this level are enormous - that's why it is a young person's sport.
Is it impossible? Well, no, but Carl Lewis started his Olympic career in 1984 too and he'd need a motorbike to be moving faster now. There is the great Merlene Ottey, who is trying (at 48) to attend her seventh Olympic games as a track sprinter - but even she isn't running her best times now and hasn't qualified yet.
But, media-wise, people like Torres generally get enshrined as saints. In times past, she'd be portrayed on every front page and the cover of Sports Illustrated as an American sporting messiah; the girl with the goods; the woman with all-American steel and skill and sizzling smile who turned the rule book on its ear and experts back to examining the basis for their expertise.
Only this is the America of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Marion Jones - and the media and public consumption of stories like 'Supermom' is becoming more discerning. They are finding it much harder to swallow.
This time, Torres has had to face directly questioning media coverage. Not that she was surprised. The murmurings about her started in Sydney - even though she has never produced a positive drugs test. Mind you, neither did Marion Jones. She passed drugs tests 160 times before she was caught by other methods.
However, Torres is in league with the US Anti-Drugs Agency (USADA) and has volunteered for a pilot programme that tests more broadly and more often for drugs through blood and urine samples.
"Can USADA give Dara or some other athlete the stamp of cleanliness?" USADA CEO Travis Tygart said last year. "No, the science isn't there yet - but I think a dirty athlete would be crazy to volunteer for this programme."
Yes, but what about the asthma medicine Torres takes? She insists she is a bona fide sufferer, even though many think some athletes take the lung-enhancing, permitted drugs even though they are not actually asthmatics.
Torres says: "You actually have to take breathing tests you can't cheat on [to be diagnosed as asthmatic and to take the medicine]."
Fair enough. Torres always presents a strong, sure case for herself. But so did Jones. And Americans were asked to believe that baseball legends Bonds and Clemens could respectively hammer home runs at 37 and hurl down pitching thunderbolts at 40 because they were superbly fit; magnificently preserved athletes; who knew how to train harder and smarter... hey, what're those pills?
That's the shame of the Dara Torres story. The East German swimmers, the Chinese swimmers and a whole raft of American athletes have loosed a virus of uncertainty into the sport.
She may be everything she says she is, Torres. I hope so. It'd be a wonderful story. She'd be one of the most impressive sportspeople in history.
But, thanks to the dopers, we can't quite believe any more. We can't quite pay homage. We want miracles - but we usually get mirrors; smoke and mirrors.
