Natalie du toit swimmer biography of christopher

“Be everything you want to be!”

“It’s important to swim your own race and not some-one else’s, and that is exactly what this remarkable South African swimmer has been doing. Having competed at the Kuala Lumpur Games in 1998 as an able bodied athlete at the age of 14, she lost her leg in a motorcycle accident in 2001. Despite this setback, she was determined to compete at the Manchester Games both as an able bodied and disabled competitor just to prove it could be done. She achieved her goal, swimming into a creditable eighth place in the able bodied 800m Freestyle, and winning gold in the 50 and 100m Elite Athletes with a Disability (EAD) events. Since then, Natalie has become one of the most successful disabled athletes of all times and an inspiration to many.

I have always had a dream to take part in an Olympic Games, and losing my leg didn’t change anything,” she says. Life was calling. The pool was calling. “I just wanted to get back to life again – swimming four hours a day – and I wanted to be able to walk again so that I would be able to do things by myself”.

Prior to the accident, a coach gave Du Toit an unattributed poem. She rediscovered it after her accident. Before, it didn’t mean much. Now, a laminated copy hangs on her wall, and she can probably recite it in her sleep:

The tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goals;
The tragedy of life lies in not having goals to reach for.
It is not a disgrace not to reach for the stars,
But it is a disgrace not to have stars to reach for.

In August 2002 she was awarded the Western Cape Golden Cross. During the award ceremony Western Cape Premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk said she had gone “beyond gold and swam her way into the hearts of not only South Africans but the whole world”.

On 10 March, 2010, she was awarded the Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability for “breaking down the barriers between disabled and able-bodied sport”.

"Hopefully we can make it clean at all levels, even at school level, and create awareness.

"A stronger punishment has to go across the board and it is important to treat everyone the same, but how do you do that when everyone is on different substances?

"95% of athletes are not caught and is it fair to just give bans to those 5% who are? Sometimes you can make an example out of someone, but then everyone has to be treated on the same level.

Du Toit came to prominence as an 18-year-old, when she reached the final of the 800m freestyle at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, just over a year after having her left leg amputated below the knee.

She made her Paralympic debut in 2004 in Athens, winning five golds and a silver. In 2008 became of a select group of athletes to take part in both the Olympics and Paralympics in the same year, when she competed in the 10k open water swimming event at the Olympics, finishing 16th, before going on to win five gold medals in the Water Cube.

But she was bitterly disappointed to miss out on a place in the South African Olympic swimming team for 2012 and signed off from her career with three golds and a silver in her final Paralympic Games.

Du Toit still holds 10 world records, but wants the future generation of swimmers, including the likes of Australia's Ellie Cole - who beat her to gold in their 100m backstroke and 100m freestyle races in London - to continue to blaze a trail for Paralympic sport.

"It is important to know that there are people coming through and they do beat me and that times don't stagnate," she added.

"The situation in disability sport is growing and girls like Ellie Cole are doing wonders.

"I wish them all the best and my message is please break all those records.

"I've been lucky enough to travel the world and win awards and medals but it was time to stop. I wanted to be young

Retired Paralympic swimming star Natalie du Toit was illegally appointed to the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee board, according to papers before court.

The claim is made by fencer Juliana Barrett in an application to the Johannesburg High Court to declare Du Toit's appointments to the Sascoc board and athletes' commission unlawful.

The action is the latest legal joust in Barrett's ongoing case against Sascoc, where she is suing the umbrella body for omitting her from the 2016 Rio Olympics. In her latest application Barrett also wants the court to:

• Order that she be included as a member of the athletes' commission, having been nominated unopposed in 2016, but disqualified by Sascoc because of her legal action; and,
• Overturn a constitutional amendment made by the Sascoc board in June last year where Du Toit's vote allegedly gave the motion a 75% majority.

Barrett's father Chris Mostert said the application would be amended to add a request that Du Toit also pay back the allowances she received as a Sascoc board member - which amounts to more than R500,000.

Mostert added he expected the matter to be heard by late January.

In her affidavit, Barrett said only six nominations for the 10 seats on the Sascoc athletes' commission were submitted in 2016, and five of them were appointed unopposed.

"My nomination was not considered by Sascoc because it had blacklisted me."

The constitution requires the athletes' commission to have six members to be quorate, she added.

While the athletes' commission is supposed to vote for the chair to represent it on the Sascoc board, Barrett said minutes showed the Sascoc executive instead appointed Du Toit as chair in 2017.

"Sascoc had unilaterally determined that [Du Toit] would be the chairperson of the athletes' commission and would sit on the board of Sascoc as the athletes' commission representative."

Barrett added that Du Toit co-opted four people to take the