Torres wins two more silvers
Dara Torres bumped into Michael Phelps in the warmdown area between her races.
“Hey, I feel like you today,” she told the 14-time gold medalist.
“You have it easy. You only swim two times,” Phelps teased the woman he calls “Mom.”
The 41-year-old Torres capped her comeback for the middle-aged with two more silver medals Sunday, missing gold by one-hundredth of a second in the 50-meter freestyle.
Her time of 24.07 seconds was a personal best, just behind German Britta Steffen’s winning effort of 24.06.
“I go home extremely thrilled,” Torres said.
She earned silver in all three of her races in Beijing, earning her 12 medals in a career that began as a 17-year-old at the 1984 Olympics in her hometown of Los Angeles. Torres is tied with swimmer Jenny Thompson for most medals ever won by an American woman.
Williams sisters golden
For the second time in two tries, Venus and Serena won the doubles gold, beating a team from Spain at the Olympic tennis complex. They did the same thing eight years ago in Sydney.
Sunday’s final was 6-2, 6-0 over Anabel Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual. The final in Sydney was 6-1, 6-1 over the Dutch team of Kristie Boogert and Miriam Oremans.
Both drama-free matches took about an hour.
The victory by the Williams sisters made it five of six for U.S. women since tennis rejoined the Olympics in Seoul in 1988.
Gymnasts’ fun persists
American Shawn Johnson won the silver medal in Sunday night’s floor exercise competition, her third silver medal of the Olympics.
Nastia Liukin took the bronze, a triumph for the 18-year-old who has spent the last year trying to improve in an event that had been a weakness. Romania’s Sandra Izbasa won the gold.
Liukin was thrilled to win her third Olympic medal.
She now has gold (all-around), silver (team) and bronze. She wants two more so she can say she has more Olympic medals than her father and coach, Valeri, who has four.
Liukin still has two events – her signature uneven bars routine today and the balance beam, where she is defending world champion, on Tuesday.