As a perpetual cynic and aspiring curmudgeon, I cannot take Dara Torres’ performance at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials at face value. I just can’t. She is 41 years old and is sleeker, stronger and faster in the water than she was TWENTY years ago. And she’s setting records (and even breaking her own from over a decade ago) in a sport where you’re pretty much finished by the time you’re in your late 20s, if that. And after two surgeries in the past year.

In the last 10 years or so, too many athletes have either performed too remarkably at the upper echelons of their olympic sports (Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin) or have gotten markedly better after they turned 40 (Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens) to be termed just genetic freaks (at this point I’m willing to give Michael Phelps the benefit of the doubt but I even wonder about him). Genetics don’t kick in further with age after you’ve already proven yourself as a world class athlete to make you legendary. They just don’t.

I’m not even saying steroids or HGH or anything is bad. I mean, it’s banned from athletics and some of it’s illegal, but I don’t really care what people do to give themselves a competitive athletic edge. Just don’t treat the public like dumbfucks and use the diet and exercise line as the only reason for your success. In fact, Torres claims her success is due to nutritional supplements and “resistance stretching.” Slate has an article that calls bullshit on all that and openly wonders WTF is going on with her, even though she’s volunteered for more stringent drug testing than most athletes.

Sadly, the state of affairs in sports today pretty much force us all to wonder WTF is going on when athletes perform near miraculously the way Dara Torres did at the olympic trials. Anyone who doesn’t have a kernel of doubt in his or her head about Torres is either naive or purposely blind.

And that’s one (more) reason why sports figures are not heroes. In most cases they’re even more flawed than we are.