Women’s swimming is coming to a close, and Dara Torres could go out with a bang, too. At the age of 41, Beijing is Torres’s fifth Olympics, and most likely her last. Torres showed off her athletic acumen Sunday with a lightning-fast 52.44-second mark in the 400-meter freestyle relay, helping bring the American women silver.

Now Torres has two more races, the 50-meter freestyle and the 400-meter medley relay, to contend with. Does she have a chance to bring home a gold from Beijing?

While Torres is expected to medal, it won’t be a cakewalk to the podium. Torres’s top rivals in the 50 free are Marleen Veldhuis from the Netherlands, who is the former world record holder with 24.09 in a 50-meter pool, or a long-course pool. The 29-year-old also snagged the world record in the event at the 2008 World Championships in short course, a 25-meter pool.

Australian swimmer Libby Trickett is expected to give Torres a good run, too. The Beijing Olympic Games haven’t been easy for Trickett, but she’s had some luck. In the semifinals of the 100-meter freestyle, she came in a disappointing fourth at 54.10, significantly behind her 52.88 world record set at the Australian trials in March. “Libby is not having an easy Olympics,” Jim Richardson, the veteran head coach of women’s swimming at the University of Michigan, said. But Trickett managed to squeeze a spot on the starting block for the 100 free, as China’s Jiaying Pang was disqualified during heats. She also took gold in the 100 fly and is a strong sprinter.

While Torres’s races will be fun to watch, Richardson forecasts that the women’s 200-meter backstroke “will be a heck of a race” between American swimmer Margaret Hoelzer, 25, and Kirsty Coventry, 24, of Zimbabwe.

Hoelzer and Coventry were teammates at Auburn University — which has one of America’s top swimming programs — until they recently switched coaches. Hoelzer now trains with Sean Hutchinson at King Aquatic Club just outside of Seattle, Wash., and Coventry moved to Austin, Texas, to train and with the University of Texas’s elite Longhorn Aquatics team.

Coventry is favored to outswim Hoelzer, having set the Olympic record of 2:06.76 at the 200 backstroke’s preliminary heats. Hoelzer is a master backstroker, but she’s been swimming in the shadows of fellow American Natalie Coughlin, who comes ahead with her signature underwater streamline. A strong streamline is an underwater glide that allows the swimmer to get further ahead in the pool before beginning to stroke.

The seasoned swimmers should watch out for up-and-coming American swimmer Elizabeth Beisel, though. Beisel, 15, is a fresh face on deck, especially in the 200 backstroke and the 400-meter individual medley. She qualified for the event at the 2007 World Championships. Beisel trains with coach Chuck Batchelor at the Bluefish Swim Club in Massachusetts.

Another race to not miss is the 800 freestyle, more for who is missing from the race: For the first time in Olympic history, an American woman will not swim the 800 free. American swimmers Katie Hoff and Kate Ziegler, considered the American hopefuls in this event, did not make it to finals. Patrick Cantrell, head coach of U.S. Masters Swimming at Asphalt Green, says the international woman to watch is Rebecca Adlington of Great Britain.

“She’s getting close to Janet Evans’s world record,” Cantrell said. Evans’s world record of 8:16.22, set in 1989, is one of the longest-standing in swimming; Adlington swam an 8:18.06 during heats, and Italy’s Alessia Filippi, another top rival, clocked in at 8:21.95. Filippi’s a distance specialist and claimed the European record of 15:52.84 in the 1500 free event at the Italian Championships in July. Camelia Potec, 26, of Romania (who won gold in the 200 free in Athens) is a strong distance swimmer and won her heat in 8:19.70 during preliminary heats in Beijing.

The grand finale in women’s swimming is the 4×100 medley relay, where each swimmer takes 100m of four strokes, leading with the backstroke, followed by the breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle stroke. In Athens, the American women — Kara Lynn Joyce, Coughlin, Amanda Beard, and Jenny Thompson — took silver at 3:59.12, behind the Australians, who came in at 3:57.32 and took gold. In Beijing, “the favorite is Australia, but I’m beginning to think the U.S. might beat them,” Cantrell said. “It’s coming down to the Americans and the Aussies, and the Chinese might get bronze.”

Team USA is expected to include Coughlin for the back, Rebecca Soni in the breaststroke, Christine Magnuson for the fly, and Torres at the end with the free. The Australians’ quartet of seasoned swimmers are expected to be Emily Seebohm in the backstroke, Leisel Jones on breaststroke, Jessicah Schipper for the fly, and Trickett, who could either swim the free or the fly. Stephanie Rice, the world record holder in the 200 and 400 IM, could also join the relay.

“I think the U.S. has a good enough time to beat the Aussies,” Richardson said. “Dara split 52 on the 400 freestyle relay, and if we can get a little edge at the end of the fly, we might have a shot at gold.”

Ms. Wu is a contributing writer for Swimmer magazine.