ARLINGTON, Va. — Torri Huske is a young woman in a hurry. It makes sense; she is a swimmer, one of the bright young stars of the U.S. Olympic team, a biracial athlete in a predominantly white sport, so fast that she didn’t break the American record in the 100-meter butterfly just once at last month’s swimming trials, she did it twice.
“Fly and die,” she calls her strategy, meaning she goes all out in the first 50 meters, and hopes she has enough left for the last 50. It’s actually part game plan, part hope — the machinations of the imaginative mind of an 18-year-old who just graduated from high school and is headed to Stanford, one of 11 teenagers who will burst into prominence on the U.