The Courage of South African Natalie du Toit Part I

Blazing A New Trail
In one of the most inspiring stories of the Beijing Games, Natalie du Toit qualified to swim the inaugural 10k open water marathon swim event, despite losing her left leg below the knee in a 2001 scooter accident. Du Toit, who swims without a prosthetic (the rules prohibit prosthetics in swimming), is the first known amputee swimmer to qualify for the Olympics.

Road to Beijing
Du Toit qualified for Beijing by finishing fourth in the 10k at the 2008 Open Water Worlds, where the top 10 finishers automatically earned Olympic berths. “That was a big surprise,” she said of the finish. “I didn’t expect to finish fourth. I didn’t think I’d be top 10 at all.”

At the time, du Toit had competed in three open water races internationally to prepare for Worlds. But she had been putting in more training than ever and said she was prepared for the race both physically and mentally. And, three-quarters through the race, du Toit noticed she was in the top 4 or 5. “I was still feeling good, so it was just my mentality to keep up there and keep going and sprint,” she said. “It’s just a lot of training that went into it, and I was mentally prepared to go out there and really want something.”

‘Don’t panic’
Of everything du Toit has learned when it comes to open water swimming, she highlights one point as the most important: “You musn’t panic,” she said. “You’re going to get hit and you’re going to get dunked, but don’t panic.” And in the 10k, which is a two-hour race, there are plenty of chances to panic. But now du Toit is prepared for those instances. “It comes with practice,” she said.

The accident
Du Toit lost her leg when she was hit by a car while riding her motor scooter in 2001. She recalls being in excruciating pain after the accident and not being able to feel her left leg, but she doesn’t remember going to the hospital. Doctors put du Toit in a hyperbaric chamber in the hopes that her muscles would regenerate, but when that was unsuccessful they told her they would have to amputate the leg. Du Toit then remembers waking up and asking her mother when the operation would be, but her mother told her it had already happened.

Return to the water
Back in the pool after six months, du Toit never considered giving up the sport. She first tried open water swimming at a race in Egypt in 2002 but, despite winning the 5k, called it a negative experience.

At the time, du Toit was training mainly for sprints in the pool and was totally unprepared for such long distances. But the 10k was added to the Olympic program in 2005, and du Toit eventually realized that could provide her another opportunity to make the Olympics. She only really began to focus on open water in 2007, but having been a distance swimmer for several years, took to the sport quickly.

Balancing act
After the accident, du Toit began a career as a motivational speaker. She talks at schools, companies and churches in South Africa in order to support her swimming. Though she enjoys speaking, du Toit says that it began to interfere with her training. She cut back on her schedule, in the past year especially, and says that is what enabled her to succeed in open water. “I had so much more training behind me than I had previously, and it gave me so much confidence,” she said.

Nearly there
Du Toit followed her older brother, Andre, into swimming as a child, and she never played any other sports. She narrowly missed qualifying for the South African team in Sydney, which was before her accident, in the 200m butterfly, 200m IM and 400m IM. She was closest in the 200m IM, where she said she missed the qualifying standard by about one second. Only 16 at the time, du Toit was considered a serious contender for 2004 and 2008.

Stay tuned as Natalie goes for more gold…in the Beijing Paralympics 2008!

Cheers Shelley

Courge of Natalie du Toit Part II

Well, the Olympics are over, the flame has been extinguished, the athletes are home with their medals and memories, and the world turns its attention to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 and Summer Olympics in London in 2012.

Over the past 17 days, we heard a lot about the exploits of Michael Phelps, Dara Torres, and Usain Bolt and their ilk, each of their accomplishments touted in the press as “historic achievements”. What we didn’t hear too much about was the real history in the making, 24-year-old South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit, who placed 16th in the 10km open water marathon swim.

Shelley congratulating the inspirational Natalie du Toit

Normally, placing 16th in a field of 25 wouldn’t get too much attention. But what makes Ms. Du Toit interesting is that she is the first amputee to compete in the Olympics. Last spring, her countryman Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who uses a pair of high tech blades for legs, got a lot of press when he lobbied the IOC for permission to use those high tech prosthetics to run in track events.

Although his argument eventually prevailed over those who thought his bionic legs gave him an unfair advantage, he rather anti-climatically failed to meet South Africa’s criteria for inclusion on its Olympic team and stayed home. While he got all the headlines, Ms. Du Toit was quietly plodding along, coming fourth at the World Open Water Championships in Seville last May, earning her berth to qualify on the Beijing Olympic swim team with minimum fanfare.

It wasn’t always like this.

Eight years ago, when she was 16, Ms. Du Toit was a promising junior swimmer who had competed in the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia and had been identified as a potential star in South Africa, a country not known for its swimming prowess. She just missed qualifying for the Sydney Olympics in 3 events, and was determined to make the team for Athens in 2004. But leaving practice one day in 2001, she was riding her scooter down a Cape Town street on her way to school when a motorist taking a shortcut through a parking lot plowed into her, damaging her left leg beyond all repair. Although doctors tried for the better part of a week to save it, Du Toit has said in interviews she knew her leg was lost at the accident scene, before the ambulance even arrived, such was the damage.

A lot of people would have given up their Olympic dreams after that, or focused their attention on the Paralympics instead. She did not. Within 18 months of the amputation at the knee, she was back on South Africa’s swim team, having qualified for the 800m event at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. She became the first “disabled” person to compete at an elite able-bodied meet.

It soon became apparent to her though, that the loss of her leg would be a problem for short, pool-based distances at such an elite level, since the margin of victory is measured in 100ths of a second, and a strong launch into the pool, turns, and kicks throughout a race are vital to success. She needed an event that depended more on endurance and upper body strength, and less on pushing through with her legs. When the open water event was added to Beijing’s lineup, she found her place.

She went to Beijing hoping for a top 10 finish, but, as is so often the case, things didn’t go exactly as planned. She had equipment problems and got hung up for a bit on a marker buoy that cost her valuable time. As it was, she finished in 2 hours, 49.9 seconds - a minute 22 seconds behind the gold medalist. Still, she outpaced 9 able-bodied swimmers, and was given no slack by any of her competitors, who lauded her tenacity and ability in the lake. They don’t see her as “disabled”. To them, Du Toit is simply a fierce competitor, who, on any given day, has the potential to leave them all behind and win.

Du Toit is staying on in Beijing for the moment, preparing for September’s Paralympics, where she will defend the five gold she won in 2004. She has become the first athlete to compete in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, a truly historic milestone in an industry that often manufactures history for marketing purposes.

She will also have to deal with the politics of some, who feel she should not have competed in the Olympics, because the Paralympics are just as important (but for the differently-abled). While she may well take home more gold in the coming weeks, she is already looking towards London in 2012, determined to show that a “disabled” athlete has just as much potential to be on an Olympic podium as any other elite athlete.

I’m looking forward to seeing her realize that dream in four years time, and achieve yet another historic milestone.

What personal handicaps are still weighing you down, holding you back and limiting you achieving your natural born Champion potential? What do you need to leave behind you in order to go forward?

Go for gold today!
Cheers Shelley