BY DOUG WILLIAMS | JUL 20, 2012, 10:00 AM ET

Karen O’Connor recently was on a conference call with reporters when she was referred to as the “senior-most member” of the U.S. Olympic team.

“How did that happen,” said O’Connor, laughing. “I’m like a senior citizen. What’s that?”

Though she doesn’t feel like the “senior-most” anything, O’Connor at 54 is indeed the oldest athlete of the 529-member U.S. Olympic Team that will compete at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

O’Connor, an equestrian who is part of the five-person eventing team that will compete at Greenwich Park in London, is a veteran of four previous Olympic Games, dating to the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. How long has that been? Carl Lewis was still a force in track and field, Greg Louganis was on his way to matching the two gold medals he won in Los Angeles and the Dream Team concept still hadn’t been adopted for the U.S. basketball team.

It’s been 24 years since her Olympic debut — or six years longer than her youngest Olympic equestrian teammate, Reed Kessler, has been alive. (Kessler, by the way, just turned 18 on July 9.) The youngest member of Team USA is swimmer Katie Ledecky, who at 15 is 39 years younger than O’Connor. The average age of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team is 27.

Yet all of O’Connor’s Olympic experiences — in Seoul in 1988 and then in Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000 and Beijing in 2008 — and a pair of team medals (a silver in 1996 and a bronze in 2000) do not mean that she is any less enthusiastic about going to her fifth Olympic Games.

If anything, O’Connor feels more enthused than ever.

She has a new horse she’s wild about, she’s going to compete in a country that is like her second home and she’s excited about her teammates and chances at what she believes will be her final Games.

She said both she and her horse, Mr. Medicott, are fit and sound and “ready to roll.”

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