Dara Torres is an American swimmer. She is the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympics: 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2008. She competed in the Beijing Olympic Games in the 50 meter freestyle, 4×100 medley relay, and 4×100 freestyle relay and won the silver medal in all three of these events.

Torres has won twelve Olympic medals (four gold, four silver, four bronze), five of which she won in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that, at age 33, she was the oldest member of the US Olympic Swim Team. She has also won at least one medal in each of the five Olympics in which she has competed, making her one of only a handful of Olympians to earn medals in five different Games.

On August 1, 2007, at the age of 40 (just 15 months after giving birth to her first child), she won gold in the 100 meter freestyle at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, her 14th win at these events. She then followed that up on August 4 by twice breaking her own American record in the 50 m freestyle, 26 years after she first set the American record at just 15 years old.

Torres was one of the 2000 Olympics swimmers featured in the book Gold in the Water, by P. H. Mullen. It describes Torres's comeback for the 2000 Olympics under coaches Richard Quick and Dick Jochums.