Early career Born and raised in
Chicago, Illinois by Mexican immigrants, Torres began running with his twin brother Eduardo at the age of eleven. He attended Wheeling High School in Wheeling, Illinois. He won the cross-country race at the 1998 Foot Locker National Championships in
Orlando, Florida, and added three more titles in his category from numerous state high school tournaments. Jorge is one of only two boys ever to run in four
Foot Locker Cross Country Championships.
Collegiate Four years later, Torres captured his first ever national title at the 2002
NCAA Men's Division I Cross Country Championship in
Terre Haute, Indiana, with a course record time of 29:04.70.
Post-collegiate Torres graduated from University of Colorado in the spring of 2003. By the summer of 2003, Torres placed third in the 5,000 meters at the
USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, and followed it with a fifteenth-place finish at the
IAAF World Championships in
Paris, France, clocking at 13:43.37. Although he missed out the U.S. Olympic team in 2004, Torres continued to build success and more importantly, improved his best possible marks in the long-distance and cross-country running. He highlighted his 2005 track campaign by posting a personal best time of 13:20.57 in the 5,000 meters at the Payton Jordan U.S. Open in
Palo Alto, California. He also enjoyed a strong cross-country season by winning a silver medal in the men's 12 km race at the U.S. national championships, and by placing fourth in the 4 km race. On April 29, 2007, Torres extended his personal best to 27:42.91, when he finished fifth in the same distance at the Cardinal Invitational in Palo Alto. Torres qualified for the
2008 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in
Edinburgh, Scotland, where he placed nineteenth in the men's race, with a time of 36:03. Torres earned a spot on the U.S. team for his first Olympics, by placing third in the 10,000 meters at the
U.S. Olympic Trials in
Eugene, Oregon, with a time of 27:46.33. Eduardo also qualified for the same distance as his twin brother, but finished the race abruptly in eleventh place. At the
2008 Summer Olympics in
Beijing, Torres competed as a member of U.S. track and field team in the
men's 10,000 meters, along with his teammates
Abdi Abdirahman and
Galen Rupp. He finished the race in twenty-fifth place by four hundredths of a second (0.04) ahead of India's
Surendra Kumar Singh, with a time of 28:13.93. A year after the Olympics, Torres began his transition of becoming a marathon runner. He ran his first half-marathon at the Great North Run in
London, with an impressive time of 1:02:42. Few weeks later, Torres made his official debut in a full distance, and set a personal best time of 2:13:00 at the 2009
New York Marathon, finishing in seventh place. In 2022, Torres was selected to be the team captain for the Midwest team at the 2022 Champs Sports Cross Country National Championships (Previously the Eastbay Cross Country Championships, and prior to that it was the
Foot Locker Cross Country Championships). While he did not run, the Midwest team won the meet with 18 points, 43 points ahead of the second team, Northwest. ==Personal bests==