The day Natalie du Toit made Olympic history

A 13-time Paralympic champion, Natalie du Toit is also part of the Olympic Games history. The South African became the first Para swimmer to compete in the Olympics at the Beijing 2008 Games.

She is also the first athlete to carry a flag in the Opening Ceremony of both the Olympics and Paralympics in a single year. Du Toit competed in the inaugural Olympic open water 10km race finishing in 16th place. Weeks later she picked five gold medals and one silver in Para swimming in Beijing.

Born in 1984 in Cape Town, Natalie du Toit displayed an affinity for water from a young age. Her swimming prowess became evident early on, and she quickly ascended the ranks in local and national competitions. By her teenage years, she was already being hailed as a future star of South African swimming. 

At only 14 she was part of the national team at the Kuala Lumpur 1998 Commonwealth Games but could not qualify for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Du Toit's promising career faced an unexpected and daunting challenge in February 2001. At the age of 17, while riding her scooter back to school after a swimming practice, she was struck by a car. The accident resulted in the amputation of her left leg at the knee. 

Refusing to let her disability define her limits, Du Toit returned to the pool just three months later, before the had even started to walk again. She reworked her technique and set the goal of competing in the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games.

“I learned I had to be classified so I could compete [in Para swimming]. I didn’t even know who my competitors were, I just wanted to be in Manchester,” she recalled in an interview to South African media years later.

In the Commonwealth Games, Natalie bagged two gold medals in Para swimming events (50m and 100m multi-class) and made history by qualifying for the 800m able-bodied freestyle final. She would also win a gold medal in able-bodied swimming at the 2007 All-African Games in Algeria.

Du Toit narrowly missed qualification for the Olympic Games in Athens 2004 but made her Paralympic debut taking five gold medals and one silver, setting world records in the process. 

Natalie Du Toit was flag-bearer for South Africa at the Beijing 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 🇿🇦@NatsDuToit won five golds at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games. At the Olympics, Du Toit competed in the 10 km Open Water Race. #OlympicDay pic.twitter.com/nVXrvJWpaf

— Paralympic Games (@Paralympics) June 23, 2020

From Seville to Beijing

Four years later, she booked her ticket to compete in the Beijing Olympic Games by finishing fourth in the 10km Open Water World Championships in Seville, Spain. For the first time, a female amputee athlete competed in the Olympics. 

“I've dreamed about it since I was six years old and I started swimming, and then when I just missed out on qualifying for Sydney. After the motorbike accident it was just a matter of going out there and seeing what I could do, but back then I could never have dreamed this day would come. Definitely not,” Du Toit said about the qualification to the Olympics in Seville. “That was the most perfect swim.”

In 2010 she was named Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability, the first African female athlete to receive the award.

Du Toit retired from competitive swimming after the London 2012 Paralympics where she won three gold and one silver medals. She also has 12 Para swimming world titles to her name (six at Durban 2006 and six at Eindhoven 2010).