Rants and Raves

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Swimming sensation Dara Torres wound up in the gossip section of a Miami-area newspaper over the weekend.

Torres, at 41, has not only qualified to become the first American swimmer to compete in five Olympics but she will make history as the oldest female swimmer in the Summer Games.

Her ex-husband, West Palm Beach surgeon Itzhak Shasha, won't be among her well-wishers when she competes in the Beijing Olympics next month.

"Believe me, I've achieved many significant things in my life," Shasha told Palm Beach Post gossip columnist Jose Lambiet, "and none of them was being married to her. I don't want to talk about that marriage, and I don't want to talk about her."

Torres, whose father, the late Ed Torres, owned the Aladdin with Wayne Newton for almost two years, divorced Shasha, now in his 60s, in December 2004.

Two years ago, she had a baby daughter with David Hoffman, a reproductive endocrinologist, who was the fertility doctor who treated Shasha and Torres.

"I did treat them, but they were separated when we started dating," Hoffman said. "I didn't cause that divorce. That relationship was collapsing way before we started dating.

"It started when my secretary tells me one day I should call Dara because she heard she and Ike (Shasha) were separated."

Torres and Hoffman have not married but are raising Tessa Grace together in Florida.

"There's no animosity between Ike and I," Torres told the Post during a break at training camp. "It just didn't work out. And I'm very good friends with his wife. We both go out with our babies."

She grew up in Beverly Hills while her father was running Las Vegas casinos during the mob years.

She was 14 in 1982 when she broke the first of three world records and won the first of her nine Olympic medals in 1984. She medaled in the '88 and '92 Games before retiring from competitive swimming the first time.

Four of her medals are gold, and she won a total of five medals in Sydney in 2000, when, at age 33, she was the eldest member on the team.

She retired again, but found the fountain of youth and won two races at the U.S. Olympic trials. When the 600 U.S. Olympians march into the stadium during opening ceremonies Aug. 8, there are rumblings that Torres will probably be out front as the flag bearer.




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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle