How do you figure someone like Dara Torres. Without difficulty, you would say. Tall and tanned with a mouthful of thousand watt teeth that makes her a natural for television. You could show a picture and ask a thousand people where they reckon Dara Torrres is from and they'd all say California. They'd all be right. Beverly Hills, they'd say pushing their luck. Right again. Filthy rich? Jackpot!

She has a television face and in press conferences she talks too much and too confidently for an athlete. Last night in Sydney she was sitting chatting to one hundred journalists when her mobile phone went. "Hi," she said, "call me in 10 minutes - I'm at a press conference" and without missing a beat she continued her answer about swimming and how little she knew about swimmers. "Wow I didn't know Inge de Bruijn (with whom she keeps up an email correspondence) had nearly retired," she said. "To be honest when I came here I didn't even know what Susie O'Neill looked like."

This was the woman who'd gushed the night before that she had seen Ian Thorpe on a bus and had spotted his hands and "oh my god I had to see his feet." She's a talker.

Last night she'd just won a bronze medal in the 100 freestyle, a situation not without its bitter ironies. When Dara Torres decided to return to swimming, she picked Richard Quick to be her coach. Quick also coaches Jenny Thompson who has six relay golds and looks as if she may need therapy if she doesn't win an individual bauble soon. Torres muscled in on her coach. Thompson finished fifth. They scarcely talk and they train separately now. If Thompson's story winds up as good as Dara Torres' has, we'll get back to her at another Olympics.

Dara Torres was 33 years and 153 days old yesterday when she won her bronze. A day younger on Saturday when she won gold on the US 4X100 relay team. She became this weekend the oldest women ever to win a medal in the pool and tied with a long-dead Australian for the longest amount of time between medals for a swimmer.

Incredibly Torres was a gold medallist back in 1984 when the Games were in Los Angeles and we thought the Cold War would never end and before her US team-mate Megan Quann was born. She won a 4x100 metres freestyle relay then, came third in the 400 free four years later in Seoul and won a relay silver, then won again in Barcelona.

Then she retired. Why not? Even for a wealthy Californian all that damn work in the pool gets tiresome. She'd quit in 1989 for a year or so and gone to work for NBC television. It felt good. She came back for Barcelona, then promptly quit again. She went to Atlanta as a fan and wasn't especially interested in seeing the swimming she says.

She had been to the Olympics, won the medals, bought the tee-shirt. She knew where to cash the cheque. She parlayed celebrity into a career becoming a television reporter, a model and the bouncy co-star of a series of infomercials for Tae-Bo, a makey-up exercise regime which she performs with objectionable energy and a big smile along with the grand makey-upper himself, Billy Blanks.

Then she was having lunch with somebody last summer and they said, hey Dara wouldn't it be a wheeze if you got back in the pool and went to Sydney. So she did.

She wasn't used to the world not scattering rose petals at her feet as she passed through it. Right on cue the world reached in and pulled out a handful. What happened next was this. Torres was having dinner in a New York restaurant with a former US senator whom she knows. The senator spotted a Speedo executive at a nearby table. The senator approached the executive, said a few words about a Torres comeback, the executive lifted a phone and said a few more. Done deal.

She called Richard Quick at Stanford and snared him as her coach. All fine. But why?

How do you figure her out with her perfect life and her perfect teeth. What makes her want to get into the pool till the chlorine burns her tan. What drives a woman who by all appearances has everything.

Someone said on Saturday, she's probably taking the stuff, eatin' da smarties. Pumping herself. Yet if you were rich, beautiful and had medals coming out your ears, would you come back for a crack at polluting yourself with that crap. Dara Torres doesn't seem that dumb.

She's got plenty but she's been through a bit. She's come through bulimia the hard way. Spent an Olympics with her finger jammed down her throat hating the perceived betrayals of her body. It took her seven years to conquer that. Maybe the taste of those seven years linger. What might have been.

She has been through a marriage which failed and she came back last year with such determination that she won the 50 metres freestyle at the US Open with just 19 weeks of training under her belt.

And then on Saturday night in the relay race she finished with a split time of 53.61, a sensationally good performance. Four of the relay competitors finished within a third of a second of her. That final On Thursday night will be one of the high points of the Games.

Either way, win or lose Dara Torres won't be a loser.

She came back to the sport after her seven-year break saying that she'd be happy to make it to Sydney as a sub on a relay team. She's pushed herself to the brink of remarkable achievement.

Her story, of it never being too late or too frightening is important. She is the poster girl for opportunity, the spirit of keeping on - and all those things.

Why did you come back? we asked her in the mixed zone yesterday and she asked if we'd seen the medals and then she grinned as if medals explained it. Why? Who ever really knows.

"I thought I should just do it while I still can," she said, and it seemed like the best answer an old swimmer could give.