Former Olympic prospect, Natalie du Toit, continued to make waves on the third day of the Nedbank National Championships for the physically disabled at the King’s Park Aquatic Centre in Durban on Tuesday, clipping almost one minute off her own world record for the women’s 400m freestyle set at last year’s Olympics in Athens.
Swimming in the S9 class for amputees, Du Toit swam the distance in four minutes 27,15s, 54s faster than her previous world mark of 4.28,09.
In her three days at the championships she has collected six gold medals and set two South African records on top of Tuesday’s world record.
”I have to say I am tremendously pleased to have achieved this time in the 400m,” she said.
”I went out fast from the start, intending to get a good time and I got it, but I know I can go still faster.
”I am in heavy training at this time of the season, preparing for next month’s national championships for able-bodied swimmers at East London.
”But when I return to my club Vineyards in Cape Town later this week, my coach, Karoly von Toros, will begin the tapering down process for those championships.
”What we are really aiming for this year is for me to do well at the 800m and 1500m distances which suit me a lot better than the shorter races — I’m not really a sprinter.”
Du Toit said that as far as her swimming career was concerned she had swum all her best times at the Paralympics.
But she also came close to breaking another world record on Monday when she was only two-hundredths of a second outside the mark for the 100m freestyle.
A spokesperson for the championships said that the presence of swimmers from the Netherlands and Britain had without a doubt stimulated local swimmers to reach greater heights and a spate of national records gone by the boards.
The track and field championships also got under way on Tuesday with several records being broken in the men’s and women’s 100m categories. – Sapa