SELECCIONES: Never Say Never

— -- Dara Torres

A hard, cold rain sweeps over an outdoor pool at the Coral Springs Aquatic Complex in South Florida, driving bystanders to huddle under an awning. In the pool, Dara Torres keeps swimming. Lap after methodical lap, flip turn after flip turn, she cuts through her lane with a muscular freestyle. And when lifeguards sound a lightning alarm, warning the swimmers out of the pool, she persists, refusing to be deterred even as the storm builds. At 41, nearly twice the age of most world-class athletes in her sport, Torres has become the first over-40 swimmer to compete in the Olympic Games. The three silver medals she got in Beijing is her answer to the dismissive comments of other athletes.

"Some competitors of mine say I'm too old," says Torres, a four-time Olympian who's won four gold medals and is the mother of a two-year-old girl. "Someone was quoted saying, 'I don't know why she's still swimming. She should be staying home taking care of her kid.' As long as I'm swimming as fast as they are, what's the problem?"

Actually, she's swimming faster. The Olympic trials begin on June 29, and Torres is currently the fastest American woman in her event: the 50-meter freestyle. "You shouldn't put an age on your dreams," she says. "People need to try, not say, 'I can't do this because I'm too old.' "

Donald Arthur

Donald Arthur ticks off the marathons he's done in the last 12 years: New York City (ten times), Los Angeles, Alaska … 27 in all. His goal is to complete the grueling 26.2-mile road race in each of the 50 states; he has 34 to go. And yet it wasn't so long ago that Arthur couldn't so much as chew his food without becoming exhausted. "To walk a block could take me more than an hour," says the 63-year-old retired bookkeeper, who lives in the Bronx, New York. Facing death from dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart he blames on decades of cigarettes and alcohol, Arthur had only one option, his doctors told him: a transplant.

He recalls the precise moment-6:10 p.m. on August 2, 1996-when he got the call that a donor heart had become available. A 25-year-old man named Fitzgerald Gittens had died from a bullet intended for someone else. After five hours in surgery, Arthur had a brand-new heart. Soon enough, he could walk up stairs without tiring.

That was just the beginning. A fellow patient told him about the Achilles Track Club, which helps people with disabilities run marathons. Arthur contacted the club's president, who told him he could complete a marathon if he trained hard enough.

"I thought he was crazy, but I went down to the club anyway and saw people who were blind and people in wheelchairs," Arthur says. "I was hooked-absolutely hooked-by the way these individuals looked at life."

The club, he says, "gave me a belief in myself." He joined its six-mile walks around Central Park, then moved up to racewalking to improve his endurance. Fifteen months after his transplant, he finished his first New York City Marathon.

In 2001, in the prelude to the Winter Games, Arthur carried the Olympic torch on part of its journey. But his most memorable run was the 1999 New York City Marathon, when he was accompanied by Mack Andrews, the brother of the man whose heart now beats in his chest.

"I put Mack's hand over my heart once we finished," Arthur says, "and I told him that his brother lives on."

Brittany Blythe

In seventh grade, Brittany Blythe dreamed of being a cheerleader. Her school's coaches were less than enthusiastic. "They said, 'I don't know how you'll be able to do it,' " she recalls. " 'You won't be able to do the stunts.' "

But Brittany, now a junior at Strath Haven High School near Philadelphia, persisted. And when the junior varsity cheerleaders won a tournament last year, she was right there, dancing and cheering with the rest of the squad.

Not bad for someone whose legs were amputated below the knee when she was two years old.

Brittany, 18, was born without shinbones-"just blood and muscle tissue," as she puts it. When she tried to walk, her legs twisted and buckled. After the amputation, she adapted quickly. "From day one, I basically jumped up and wanted to do everything," she says. Prosthetic legs allowed her to move around upright, but too slowly to keep up with her friends. Brittany's solution: take the legs off and walk on her knees-something she still does when safety and comfort permit.

She's rarely daunted. Other children teased her through the years, especially in junior high school, but she says the challenge only made her stronger. Now she's trying to convince her coaches to let her shed the prostheses and be a flyer, the cheerleader who's thrown in the air and caught by her teammates.

Brittany doesn't think her problems are any more difficult than the next person's. "My disability was the first thing I had to get through, and that's going to prepare me for the future," she says. "It's all just a test: If someone throws you a curveball, what are you going to do?"