The Long Goodbye

Dara Torres

Exhausted but ecstatic, it finally hit Dara Torres as fast as a world-record swim.

Despite having retired twice before only to return, this was her final view from the medals stand, and she knew it. She had just finished a week in Sydney where she won three individual bronze and two relay gold medals in her record fourth Olympics, but all she could do was cry and cry.

And cry some more.

"There I was, standing with my relay teammates, having a gold medal placed around my neck, and when the national anthem started playing, it finally hit me - and it hit me hard and fast," said Torres, who first retired shortly after college in 1989 before coming back for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, after which she retired again.

"I was so focused on swimming my best, that when it was over, I was really sad. Even though I'd already had a career outside of swimming, I started thinking to myself - What am I going to do now?' I was a total mess, and I was finally upset that my swimming career was over. I found my coach, and I just started crying. It wasn't until five or six months later that I was okay with it. Now, when I look back, I'm so happy that I did what I did, and I'm very happy to finally be retired."

Before her second comeback in 1999, Torres enjoyed a successful, lucrative career in commercials (who can forget her as the pitchwoman for the Tae-Bo infomercials?), television commentary and modeling/acting. Despite the success away from swimming for many years, she still had a burning desire to accomplish more in the pool.

"Most swimmers have had so much success for so long that's it's hard to imagine a life without swimming - and winning at something," said Torres, who now does work for the USA Network and commentary for a golf show. She is also a spokesperson for Toyota and travels the United States giving motivational speeches.

"Swimming is the type of sport that requires much time, dedication and focus, so the longer you stay in the sport - no matter how successful or unsuccessful you may be - the longer you can put off stopping and moving on to the next phase of your life. That's extremely difficult and scary."

Tom Dolan

Tom Dolan thrived on the adrenalin rush of competition. Even though his body threatened to betray him before, during and after nearly ever race, he always fought through his debilitating exercise-induced asthma and acid reflux disease.

"My health was always a concern for me, and in 1998 and again in 2000, I took some time off to analyze what I wanted, and to see if I felt like continuing to push my body competitively as I had been for years," Dolan said. "Both times, I realized I wasn't ready to give it all up yet, and I gradually got back into training."

But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and that also applied to Dolan's swimming career.

A little more than a year after the Sydney Olympics, where he defended his gold medal in the 400m IM in world-record time, Dolan realized his desire to continue intense training and deal with his health problems - breathing, in particular - was waning.

Thus, despite a career that included two Olympic Games, numerous world and Olympic medals and records and incredible success, his decision to leave the sport proved easier than even he could have anticipated.

"It was easy for me, because near the end, swimming wasn't fun anymore," Dolan said. "That and my health concerns made it clear to me that it was time to move on. For some athletes, it's difficult to come to terms with a retirement tied to injury or health, but for me, it was a sign that it was time to stop. I felt that I had done everything I was meant to do, and I felt great about how my career had gone.

"Now that I've been away from the sport for a couple of years, I still have no desire to swim competitively again. I have experienced no withdrawal. You couldn't pay me enough to get back in the water and swim again."

Lindsay Benko

But that's not the case for everyone who leaves the sport after experiencing so much success. It's a difficult transition - one that takes time, patience and often success in another arena.

After the 2004 Athens Games but before the Short Course World Championships last October in her native Indiana, Lindsay Benko faced the prospect of a future without swimming.

Despite winning medals as a member of the 400m and 800m freestyle relays at the 2004 Olympics, over the past year or so Benko thought more and more about making the Short Course World Championships her swan song so she could start building a life with fiance Mike Mintenko, a Canadian swimmer.

But then she swam to a silver medal in the 200 freestyle in Indiana, and her mindset changed - for the time being.

"I just don't know if I'm ready to end my swimming career yet," said Benko, who also won her 10th and 11th U.S. national titles at last year's Spring Nationals. "I think if I would have swum better at the Olympics, it would be a totally different story - but I might be done, as well.

"I have been swimming for 21 years, I am getting ready to be married and I just think that I need to start a new chapter in my life. I love swimming so much, but at 27 - almost 28 - years old, I have never held a real job, nor have I really known a life without swimming. So right now, I am just taking some time away from the pool and deciding what I want to do. I want to make a solid decision and make sure it is the right decision for me and my family."

Different for Everyone

Like most athletes of Torres', Dolan's and Benko's calibre, finding the right time - if one truly exists - to step away from the sport and embark upon the next phase of their lives comes at a different time and pace.

Their intense dedication, extreme focus and long hours of training and sacrifice build a sort of tunnel vision. When it comes time to hang up the goggles and put their swimming careers behind them, they grapple with the decision in a manner that fits their own individual struggle to come to terms with the idea that they are done swimming.

When you take into account that less than one percent of athletes who participate in competitive sports ever reaches the elite level, and that world-class athletes commit on average 20 hours of quality training per week for a period of eight years (approximately 10,000 cumulative hours), their sport often becomes the most important thing in their lives.

Now add in the fact that most of these athletes are ending a phase of their lives at a very young age (the average world-class athlete retires from his or her sport at age 33, with swimming even younger), and it becomes even clearer why they struggle with the idea of trading something so familiar and comfortable for the unknown.

Dr. Alan Goldberg, a sports psychologist and regular presenter at clinics, colleges and high schools across the world, equates the difficulty of accepting retirement for elite athletes - swimmers in particular - with their mental and emotional makeup as well as their method of training.

"Swimmers are a different breed from other athletes because their training is built on endurance. They are isolated in the water, in individual lanes, and they think independently, even though they may be part of a bigger team," said Goldberg, whose clientele is 70 percent swimmers. "Their training is rigorous, which requires a great deal of passion to succeed. In many ways, you have to be a bit of a masochist to succeed at swimming."

What Else Can I Do?

"Elite, competitive athletes in general have invested time and energy into their sport and have committed so much of themselves that their identity is often tied up in the sport," Goldberg said. "They think to themselves, â"If I'm not swimming, then who am I?' They go through an identity crisis and don't know who they are. They question their purpose outside of swimming."

Dr. Patrick Cohn, who works mainly with golfers but has counseled athletes from all sports, agrees, and takes the idea of sport and identity to another level.

"Many athletes have never pictured their lives without playing their particular sport," said Cohn, a former athlete and president and founder of Peak Performance Sports in Orlando. "They have always seen themselves as a professional or elite athlete and have put so much time, energy and money into being successful that they have failed to plan a life without sports for themselves.

"Many retired athletes feel a lack of significance or purpose in their lives because their sport has encompassed the majority of their lives. They may also feel that whatever they do after retirement from the sport may seem like a step down. Athletes who compete at a high, competitive level for many years get their sense of self-esteem and recognition from their sport, and retirement means the end of that. They establish themselves as special in their sport, and once they retire, in their minds, they may no longer be special. The natural high they get from competing is almost impossible to duplicate or equal."

Dolan, who transitioned from competitive swimmer to competitive sales trader in the Washington, D.C. area, views this aspect of moving away from elite swimming as one of the most critical.

"It's a difficult situation for swimmers - athletes in general - when they've enjoyed successful careers," said Dolan, who wrote a daily journal for Sports Illustrated online during the 2004 Athens Olympics, but felt no desire to return to competitive swimming. "When you're successful in swimming, it's difficult to find the "perfect' job - the one that will give you the same rush, the same excitement, the same success as you experienced with swimming. Swimmers tend to be perfectionists, and that makes the transition even more difficult.

"Swimmers don't often look past their sport to find out what else they might be interested in. We don't have a three- to four-month off-season to try some things and find where our interests lie. And when we do stop swimming and start looking for work, it's difficult to find a job that's at the same level as Olympian or World Champion. Those kinds of jobs just don't exist. So, we have to reset our goals - the same goals we've had in our heads since we were young - to find what's important to us, and that takes time."