BEIJING – Michael Phelps may be the most astounding athlete of the Beijing Olympics.

Natalie du Toit is the most inspirational.

Phelps’ eight gold medals and seven world records left you in awe.

Du Toit’s effort in the open water swimming marathon left you in tears.

Phelps set his record with a body custom-made for swimming. Du Toit swam 6.2 miles with one leg.

Du Toit became the first female amputee to compete in the Olympics. She finished 16th in the new Olympic event, crossing the line in two hours, 49.9 seconds Wednesday after swimming around the lake at the Shunyi Park venue used by rowers and kayakers.

“For me it was a dream, and I gave it everything, but I’m glad it’s over,” said du Toit, a South African. “I wanted to come in the top five.”

Nevertheless, she got here, the first amputee athlete to compete in the Olympics since American George Eyser won three gold medals in gymnastics on a wooden leg in 1904. Du Toit and table tennis player Natalia Partyka of Poland, who was born without a right forearm, are the only two disabled athletes competing in the Beijing Games.

“I don’t even think about not having a leg, and if I want to keep competing I will have to continue to qualify with the able-bodied,” du Toit said. “I don’t want anything free. I’ve worked hard. It’s not like the other athletes are going to say, ‘Oh, she’s disabled so we’ll swim slower.”‘

Du Toit, 24, swims without a prosthesis and can’t move her left leg, which was amputated just below the knee. It drags behind her in the water. She’s got half the kicking power of her opponents. She compensates by pulling harder with her left arm.

She stayed near the leaders for the first half of the race, but lost ground when her cap got caught on a turning buoy. She fell back in the pack and was “dunked” on a couple turns, when the race becomes a Roller Derby of pushing and bumping.

The swimmers stroked rhythmically around the course, a mass of bobbing heads amid splashes. At the feeding pontoons, they grabbed water bottles and turned on their backs to drink.

After two hours, du Toit was spent.

“I couldn’t even get out of the water so it shows I gave my best,” she said.

For all of Phelps’ success, it was a calculated feat, down to the last second. Du Toit wound up in Beijing by accident. In 2001, when she was 17, she was riding to her Cape Town school from swim practice on her motor scooter when she was hit by a car pulling out of a parking lot.

The collision shattered her leg. For five days, doctors tried to save it, transplanting an artery and inserting a rod. “They couldn’t close it because there was no tissue,” said du Toit’s mother, Diedre. “She was literally bleeding from the inside out. They had to operate every day. Once they found the bones didn’t knit, they had to amputate right away.”

Within two days, du Toit was out of bed and trying to hobble down the hall, with therapists’ help.

“She’s never looked back,” her mother said. “When you’re hurt at 17, you’re not disabled mentally. You’re the same person so you want to do the same things you did before.”

Within five months of the accident, du Toit was back in the pool. At first, she cried in frustration. She had to stop and grab the wall. But swimming dulled the phantom pains.

“I felt like my leg was still there,” she said. “You’re reminded every day that you’re disabled. But I can be completely free in the water.”

Too many people go through life looking for special treatment. Star athletes, especially, tend to feel entitled to their tailored set of rules.

Du Toit just wants to fit in. That was the whole point of her participation in the Olympics. She will also compete in the Paralympics, as she did four years ago, when she won five gold medals and a silver, but she wanted her chance to swim with her peers.

Unlike countryman Oscar Pistorius, a sprinter who competes on carbon-fiber prosthetic blades called Cheetahs, du Toit swims with what she’s been left with.

“I’ve never worked out exactly how much of a handicap it is,” said du Toit, who swims 50 miles per week.

Misfortune can be used as an excuse. Du Toit used it as motivation. She had always dreamed of going to the Olympics. She almost qualified in three events in 2000. Once she learned that open water swimming – without the starts and flip turns of the pool – was added to the Olympic program, she shifted her focus to the endurance event.

Phelps posed for the Sports Illustrated cover photo with eight golds arrayed across his chest. But du Toit’s picture is the one we should keep at our desks. She is the one who can remind us not to grumble about what we lack and appreciate what have.

Du Toit admits there are dark days. She hates when people look at her stump or her prosthetic leg before they look at her face.

But then she gets back in the water – the equalizer.

She loves racing because it’s a pure meritocracy. She finished fourth at the world championships in May

“She’s amazing,” said American Chloe Sutton, who finished 22nd Wednesday. “I mean, she beat me and she has one leg.”

For Du Toit, swimming in the Olympics was a victory of inclusion. But it’s also set her apart. She carried South Africa’s flag in opening ceremonies. She received a phone call from Nelson Mandela. She’s been mobbed by the media.

“My message is not just to disabled people,” she said. “You can be what you want to be.”