Yet she need not worry; America much prefers a fairytale and couldn't help laughing with her when Torres looked up at the clock after breaking the national 50m record at the trials and thought: "It's all blurry. Hey, they need to make those numbers a little bigger for people my age."
The longevity of Torres's career is symbolic of how great athletes are becoming adept at self-preservation. Like Australian rower James Tomkins, who'll be after gold medal number four at 42, and Jeannie Longo, the French cycling great who'll be at her seventh Games here.
As for Torres, she became the oldest American swimmer ever to qualify for an Olympics and the first from her country, like Mark Foster for Britain, to reach a fifth Games. Her US record in the short sprint had come 26 years after she'd first broken the record aged 15 and 24 years since she'd won the first of her nine Olympic medals in 1984.
In between had come two retirements - she won fivemedals in Sydney in 2000 after seven years out of the sport - a spell as a TV commentator and the birth of her daughter Kelly but each time the siren call of the pool hypnotised her. Just to add to the emotion of her latest comeback, she has been prone to tears too, worrying about her coach Michael Lohberg back home who has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal blood disorder.
When Torres arrived for training here the other day, she discovered the famed Beijing smog blanket even hung inside the Water Cube venue. Not what an asthmatic needs to see. Yet she's battling on for more than just herself now.
"I have so many middle-aged women who look up to me. I want them to feel proud and feel like they can do what they set out to do," she said.
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