Early Years
Torres was born in Beverly Hills, California, the daughter of Edward Torres, a Cuban-born casino owner, and former model Marylu Kauder. She grew up in Los Angeles, California, the fifth of six children and the older of two girls. At age 7, Torres started following her brothers to swim practice at the local Y.M.C.A. and later joined the Culver City swim team.
She attended the Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake School), and swam for the Westlake swim team under coach Darlene Bible, where she set California Interscholastic Federation records that remain to this day. As a teenager in the 1980s, she swam for the Mission Viejo Nadadores, in Mission Viejo, California, under coach Mark Schubert, the 2008 Olympic swimming coach.
Read more about this topic: Dara Torres
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“[Research has found that] ... parents whose children were “baby altruists” by two years firmly prohibited any child aggression against others. Adults not only restated their rule against hitting, for example, but they let the little one know that they would not tolerate the child hurting another.”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)