US swim star's coach fights for life with rare disorder: report

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

MIAMI (AFP) — US swimmer Dara Torres, set for her fifth Olympics next month in Beijing at age 41, is devastated as her coach for the past two years, Michael Lohberg, faces an unexpected fight for his life.

Lohberg was set to leave for Singapore on Friday but the Miami Herald reported he was off to suburban Washington to the National Institutes of Health to try and save his life from aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder.

"It's so awful - really, really terrible. I can't even talk about it right now. I haven't stopped crying," Torres told the newspaper.

Torres and seven other non-US Olympic swimmers who work with Lohberg at the Coral Springs Aquatic Center were to have received instructions from their mentor in Beijing.

Now he will be seen by...