Natalie du Toit's lesson on how to fulfil a dream

Natalie Du Toit finished 16th in the women’s 10 km swimming at the Olympic Games in Beijing.
She will not be happy with that finish, but an entire nation — indeed, much of the world — is celebrating an incredible sporting feat.
Swimming with one leg against the world’s finest athletes, Natalie has become the role model that this nation badly needs.
She has shown that what is important is the will to fight, to do your best, whatever adversity life hands you.
As she put it after her fantastic swim:
“I think for me to come to an Olympic Games is a dream come true. My message isn’t just to disabled people, but to everyone out there — you have to work hard to make your dreams reality.

Natalie du Toit carried the flag for South Africa at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games. She wore a prosthetic leg, but few probably noticed. She has long awaited this moment, when she can stop being a disabled swimmer and start being just a swimmer again.

You hear a lot about dreams at the Olympics, and Natalie du Toit's should have died on a Monday morning in Cape Town when she eased her scooter out into the road and was broadsided by a careless driver. A week later she lay in a hospital bed with a stump where she used to have a left leg.

Six months after the amputation she jumped into the same swimming pool where she had made her name as one of South Africa's most promising teenage athletes and struggled to finish 25metres. “If I tried breaststroke on one leg,” she said, “I went round in circles.”

In Beijing she has been sought after by the world's media, particularly after she carried the flag for the South Africa team at the opening ceremony. “What if I can't carry it, what if I trip and fall?” she wrote on her website beforehand. And afterwards? “The standing hurt a little, but it was all worth it. I had tears in my eyes when the flame was lit.”

The journey has had its difficult moments. Her mother upbraided her when she became downcast just before the Athens Olympics. She has had to learn to discipline her mind to fight off thoughts of “what if”.