Reaching Olympus in open water
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Aquatics
Natalie du Toit was distinctive in two ways in a murky river in Spain earlier this year in the moment that she qualified for the 10km marathon swim at the Bejing Olympics. One was that she had only one leg and had to wait in the water until an aide brought her prosthetic. The other was that she had a black eye.
Marathon swimming is an incongruously brutal sport even for the able-bodied. There is the distance, meant to aproximate the terrestial marathon. Yesterday's course was four laps of the Olympic rowing venue at Shunyi, a shallow, warm, still lagoon that to judge from the neighbourhood would be overgrown with algae if left untreated. There are the obstacles: jellyfish, slime and sea snakes elsewhere, weeds here. At least one swimmer found herself entangled. Another swum headlong into a large orange buoy ''As if I couldn't see it!'' she said.
And there are the other swimmers. du Toit says they are a tightknit bunch who travel together in a troupe as pool swimmers do not. But in the water, it is every woman for herself. Yesterday' winner, Russian Larisa Ilchenko, was yellow-carded for elbowing Brazil's Ana Cunha, but said she was also assailed.
''It's meant to be swimming, not boxing,'' she said.
Great Britain's Cassandra Patten, the bronze medalist, believed fourth-placed German Angela Maurer yanked her leg as they flailed for the finish line, and the pair almost came to fisticuffs on the pontoon. Patten said she applied a three-strikes policy: two punches she would accept, but after the third the gloves were off.
In the midst of this murder yesterday, du Toit gave and got, swum, wrestled with a swimming cap that would not stay on her head, swum some more, hoped to contest for the medals, but instead was 16th, in almost exactly two hours, and blamed only herself.
''I thought I would come top five, so I'm beating myself up a bit,'' she said. ''The cap was the biggest factor.''
Du Toit is happy that she inspires others, but thinks it is an incidental. She does not see herself as a campaigner for the disabled, but as a swimmer who today is an Olympian on merit. In this, she demonstrates a distinctly South African cussedness identifiable also in the double amputee runner Oscar Pistorius, who fought in vain to be allowed to run here on prosthetics. du Toit, of course, does not use a prosthetic in the water. ''It would rust,'' she said.
Du Toit was a highly-rated junior swimmer until when riding her scooter from training to school one morning in Cape Town when she was 17 was hit by an inattentive driver. ''My leg burst open, like if you drop a tomato on the ground,'' she said this week. She remembers looking at her left foot, unmarked, but now useless.
She climbed out of bed the day after the amputation.
Later that week, when she saw looks on the faces of visiting teammates, she threw back the bedsheet as if to demand that they deal with her new reality as she intended to deal with it. She did not ask for pity, then or since. She makes the jokes: she can't swim breast-stroke any more, she said, because she keeps going around in circles.
Swimming had been her life, the Olympics her Olympus; it would remain so. In water, her missing leg did not matter as much as on land.
''I can take my leg off and I'm completely free in the water,'' she said. ''That's who I am.''
She learned to compensate, sometimes unwittingly. She grew even stronger in the shoulders, especially the left. Recently, while watching footage of herself, she noticed that her remaining foot turned in as she swam, like a rudder.
At the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002, du Toit dominated the disabled events, and reached the final of the able-bodied 800 metres, and was named athlete of the games, ahead of Ian Thorpe. But she still cherished her Olympic dream.
The incorporation of an open-water swim in the Olympics for the first time in Beijing games was timely. She had been a distance swimmer anyway, medleys especially. After losing her leg, her biggest handicap in the pool was not lack of speed, but getting away from the blocks and tumble-turns, neither a problem for a marathon swimmer. She asked for no concessions.
She cried the day she qualified for Beijing, and again when she was named South Africa's opening ceremony flagbearer.
She was ready to compete ready when the pool swimmers were ready, and said the extra fortnight's wait had been killing. When she heard her name announced at the start line yesterday, she said she felt as she imagined the French rugby team did when lining up for the national anthem before a semifinal of the World Cup in Paris two years ago. ''I almost shed a couple of tears,'' she said.
Open-water swimming is the Olympics oldest and newest event. All swimming at the 1896 games was in the icy Aegean, including a race entitled ''100 metres for sailors''. The first pool was a 100-metre tank built for London in 1908, which signalled a hiatus for the open water concept until this week.
Swimming 10km is a considerable feat of perseverance and endurance, but it has to be said, not a spectator sport. Once the 25 contestants dived in yesterday, they were surrounded by a flotilla of nine officials and media craft and pretty much lost to sight for the next two hours. When fans, including the Australain swim team, rose to their feet, it was only to stretch and yawn.
The leading contenders remained tightly packed throughout, swimming powerfully with their arms, but kicking little. The competition was willing. du Toit said that at the turning buoys, there was much dunking. Food and drink was made available in canisters on the end of booms, but in the chaos, some missed out, fatefully. du Toit wrestled with her cap.
''Every time you stop you lose rhythm and lose pace, and I got stuck in the pack,'' she said. ''I beat myself up a bit.''
Done, du Toit sat on the pontoon for a long time, while an official knelt beside her, resting his arm on her upright prosthetic. A media scrum awaited, making for more rough and tumble, but du Toit did not mind. She was hurting, not because of her disability, but as an athlete hurts, from giving her all. The medallists made a point of applauding her, Ilchenko saying if she had her way, she would give du Toit gold and silver just for making it to Beijing.
''I was glad it was over,'' she said. ''I did cry a little bit, and as you can see, I'm going to shed a couple of tears now. It's been a long road.''
Immediately, du Toit has the Paralympics, which put a hobble on her celebrations last night. Then there is London, 2012.
On Tuesday night, Australian cyclist Anna Meares said people at the Olympics seemed to grow a leg. In a sense, du Toit has. Making the Olympics fulfiled one of two burning ambitions. The other is to run.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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