August 06 2002 at 09:50PM

	By Kevin McCallum

Before she boarded her flight to the Commonwealth Games about a month ago, a Johannesburg International Airport official looked at Natalie du Toit and tut-tutted.

“Ag shame,” he said. “There you are on the way to Manchester and you’re already limping.”

“You should have seen his face when I told him I had a false leg,” said Du Toit, back at Johannesburg International Airport on Tuesday. The official was nowhere in sight and her limp, if anything, was more pronounced, weighed down as she was by the two gold medals hanging around her neck.

Natalie is still getting used to walking with a prosthesis.

When she picked up her trophy for the most outstanding athlete of the Games on the closing night, she almost fell on the slippery steps.

Matric pupil Natalie is possibly the most famous disabled person in the world right now.

Make that part-time disabled, for she has yet to decide whether she is a disabled athlete or an able-bodied one.

She is off to swim in the African Championships in Cairo this weekend against the able-bodied.

Disabled Sport South Africa (Disa) are hoping to convince her to take part in both. The Olympics are her goal, the Paralympics a close second. To do both would be unique.

Natalie has become an almost reluctant role model and is gradually coming to terms with the weight that had been placed on her 18-year-old shoulders.

“I don’t like to see myself as a role model. If anything, I can show people they can also do it, that they must go out there and really try their best. I’ve worked hard and I believe hard work pays off,” said Du Toit.

Her immediate future is with those nasty matric finals. After that, maybe, a scholarship to a United States university where she would study a “BSc in human movement majoring in kinetics”.

She limped off into that future, gingerly walking down a staircase in Johannesburg International and through a tunnel of players from Banyana Banyana, the South African women’s football team, who wanted to acknowledge the path Du Toit walks so proudly.