I doubt it has anything to so with becoming a mommy. At 15 your body is still growing. Women are at their peak in both sex and everything in their 30s & 40s...best years of your life.

Ms. Torres is likely juiced. As much as want to believe that time doesn't diminish us, we're not faster and stronger at 40 than we are at 20, unless we're Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds...and likely, Ms. Torres.

Now, I'm a feminist, but I'm also a storyteller and so am aware of narrative. As someone who's written for the major feminist mags, I'm also aware of the feminist narrative. I'm not being pejorative here: every ideology has its narrative. And every ideology seeks those snippets that justify one's narrative. However, Ms. Harding, this snippet seems a little naive. If you think Ms. Harding is faster at 40 than she was at 20, do you also believe Mr. Clemens and Mr. Bonds when they assert that they never ever juiced? It's just that Ms. Torres has the attractive angle of pregnancy to sell her smoke. It's:

Ladies, we can rebuild her. We have the bio-technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bio-bionic woman. Ms. Torres will be that woman. Better than she was before. Better, stronger, faster.

There's also the likely, coming irony of it being revealed that Ms. Torres lowered her times by injecting a male hormone, which will be ironic because Ms. Harding wants us to believe that female hormones lowered Ms. Harding's times.

I hope I'm wrong. However, as someone who also writes for sporting mags, I've heard athletes say that astonishing numbers of athletes are juiced: they just won't say so on the record.

I'm bothered by the idea that "so much of the news about postpartum life is bad." It's not. So much of the hype about postpartum life is bad. Depression is bad, yes, and should be acknowledged and treated appropriately, but it's far from universal, and all that bad "news" certainly doesn't help anyone to feel better. Most of us survive childbirth with our bladder control intact, we get through the early months with little sleep, we get used to having different (but not worse) bodies than we had before, and we get on with life and parenthood, generally quite happily. Let's not perpetuate the myths.

As a longtime member of the U.S. Track and Field team (I was in race walking, and by the way, some the top Russian walkers were withrawn from beijing by the Russian Federation today for EPO), I follow these issues pretty closely and have been on the list for random, out-of-competition drug testing for years. I, too, have been pretty suspicious of Torres (have you seen her abs?!) but apparently she's cooperating with USADA with very extensive blood and urine testing to counter that perception.

What I wanted to say is that in the 1980s, some East German athletes planned pregnancies for a few months before the competition season, and then aborted them before racing, the theory being that the pregnant woman makes more estrogen, then naturally makes more testosterone too to balance it, and the testosterone was an ergogenic aid, a "natural" steroid. The downside is that estrogen makes the ligaments more elastic (so you can make room for the baby and push it out?) so pregnant women training hard would be a bit susceptable to injuries, but otherwise, the testostrone effect was a big help. Some drawbacks to pregnancy, in athletic terms -- you shouldn't get extremely hot (sauna, jacuzzi) and shouldn't raise the heart rate to extremes, but these are of no concern if you plan to abort. Also, no worries about taking antinausea drugs that could cause birth defects -- again, the baby is just a training aid like weight lifting or living at altitude.

Ghastly but true.

Given the now emerging truth--that doping tests are a literal blind roulette wheel and seldom capture more than a micron of the amount of doping really going on--all that's left to do is concoct a suitable story to cover for your amazing performance gains. Yes, suddenly and against all odds, despit being over forty, you have gained thirty pounds of pure muscle and have only increased your physical stamina. It was the pregnancy of course. This is Torres' latest 'explanation' for her newfound middle aged prowess--before it was some kind of Charles Atlas-esque dynamic tension thing.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195473/

taking several drugs/supplements that are on the band substances list or would be on the band substances list if the nazi like Anti Doping Gestapo could figure out what she is on. What I wonder is how she will be treated if the Gestapo figure out a test in the next 2 weeks that will find one of the PED she is on. Does she get the Landis treatment? Bonds treatment? Of the Shawn Merriman/insert every other NFL player that tested positive treatment?

You forgot the part about the 2 surgeries in the last 8 months and how Torre miraculously healed in time and found training time. Going into the Olympics the biggest question I have is how is NBC going to handle her? Normally this is the type of story their Olympic producers would kill their mother for but do they want to risk being burned?

I'm no olympian, but 10 months after the birth of my son I'm better than ever. Those "side effects" like diminished bladder control and extra pounds are overblown, usually they are temporary. I probably weigh less than I did before I was pregnant thanks to breastfeeding, and there is no doubt that the extra weight I carried while pregnant (and now in my arms) has made me physically stronger.

Melanie Roach? Do you people feel that her return to weightlifting also had something to do with being juiced? (From what I understand she had to recover from a severe back injury.)

I would think that for a non-athlete there would be some advantages to carrying some extra weight for a time--as during pregnancy. But it doesn't seem like someone who had competed at that level of competition would gain anything from such an experience, they would, i imagine have already reached a level of performance beyond what you have described.