302: amputee swimmer leads and inspires

Another uplifting flag-bearing tale today! This time, as South African website News 24 reports, the athlete concerned is Natalie du Toit, who carried South Africa's flag for her team at the Olympic opening ceremony today. Natalie is a long-distance swimmer, whose left leg was amputated at the knee in 2001 after a motorcycling accident. She had competed at the Commonwealth Games before that, and this year she qualified for both the Paralympics and the Olympics - the first amputee ever to have done so. Like Lopez Lomong for the US, Natalie was the obvious choice to carry the flag for South Africa today. Her own words sum up the Olympic spirit better than anything I could craft: "Everybody has problems, everybody has things that get them down. It's just saying, 'I can go out there, if I have a dream, I can really, if I work hard and I believe in it, I can achieve it'."