Natalie Du Toit and Dan Hugo are not only Garmin ambassadors, they are also national heroes and our cover stars too. In these Garmin Sport pages we celebrate Natalie and Dan for their sporting achievements and their ability to do good.

Natalie Du Toit — South Africa’s Olympic Gold Medalist and national golden girl— is of the belief that South Africa is full of hidden talent waiting to be nurtured. So what did she do? She took part in a fantastic swimming clinic that saw local kids getting wet.

In February 2011, Pimville Pool was filled with excitement as local children were given a swimming lesson not only by Natalie, their idol, but by two international swimming coaches too. Italian coach, Fabio Cuzzani (Head Coach) and Roberto Odaldi (Technical Coach) were in South Africa to develop, inspire and apply their expertise to the South African Swimming Federation and to local communities too. Coach Fabio Cuzzani is an Italian Open Water technical coach. He coaches both girls and boys world champion teams and is the only coach that has had success in World Championships for both Open water – 5; 10; 25km as well as 50m free sprinting. He also manages sport centres and consults in swimming fitness and endurance.
Roberto Odaldi is an Italian technical coach and is an assistant coach to well-known Open Water swimmers, Martina and Rachele. He also has a nutrition background and is an expert in the “costume versus race” debate.

It was with these extensive expertise that the two Italian coaches first trained South African provincial swimming coaches and then took on the local kids in Soweto.

Natalie was there to inspire, motivate and lend a helping hand and overall the clinic gave the kids a once in a lifetime experience to develop their skills. Another feather in Natalie’s swimming cap, as if there’s any space!


Super Dan Rises Again
Super Dan aka Dan Hugo, used the Garmin Westcoast Warmwater Weekend in Langebaan to put his fitness to the test — and walked away the super hero. Dan convincingly won the triathlon with its 2km swim, 60km cycling and 12km running, beating other super-athletes Lieuwe Boonstra and Raoul de Jongh, who came second and third respectively.

This was Garmin’s second lifestyle-focused weekend, hosted in the West Coast National Park, and an even bigger success than last year.

"It is a fantastic lifestyle event where multisport athletes stay for an entire weekend of social interaction and active passion," Dan described. "The venue is idyllic and one I know really intimately having frequented Langebaan since the cradle with a family vacation home near by."

This was Dan’s third event of the new-year after the Totalsports Challenge and Xterra Buffelspoort. Unfortunately Dan suffered a calf injury at the Challenge and had to withdraw from the 70.3 SA in East London. But he showed his true superhero colours at The Garmin Warm Water Weekend where he tested to see how his body would react after recovering from his strain.

"My body was open and responsive for an all round encouraging performance especially with the SA Xterra Championships in less than two weeks time," said Dan.
One of Dan’s highlights of the weekend was being able to ride his time trial bike in race conditions.

"Getting to race the Specialized Shiv after withdrawing from the 70.3 SA event was a pleasure. I've spent a lot of time in an aero position and relished getting to race tucked up again."

" Garmin and Tropitone are dreamGivers in my platform, and both supported the concept of a lifestyle event with a seamless extension of their brand values — which match mine. What a great fit!"


Sport Master
Andy Wood aka The General of www.superbru.co.za talks cricket, picking winners and an F1 track on the Cape flats.

So you are in the business of making predictions, who do you predict will win the cricket world cup?
World Cups are generally won by teams with belief or teams with experience that can dig deep. India and Sri Lanka will naturally be a challenge as they will be familiar with the wickets. South Africa could go all the way and you can never discount Australia. But right now, I think the team with belief is England. If they can handle the conditions and keep that faith I think they’ll do it.

What’s your overall pick percentage for cricket and rugby games on your site?

I was pretty chuffed to be fourth out of 15,000+ in our Six Nations game after the first week this year. All in, I’m pretty bad at cricket with a 50% accuracy in picking winners. 74% in World T20 last year was about as good as it gets for me. I’m better at rugby: 76% in Super 14 last year, 84% in the Currie Cup. But my best was 88% in Currie Cup 2009.

Cape Town has bid for a 2013 Grand Prix. Is the money that will be spent worth the investment?
When I first heard about this, I thought ‘they’re going to blow a couple billion building a track on the flats, which will get used once.” But when I read further it turned out that they’re planning a street race around Green Point. That will be cheaper and a neat spectacle, but it’s impossible to measure the return. The worry is that while SA will build up to it with great excitement, the rest of the world will see it as just another Grand Prix — a few days of buzz and focus and then they’ll forget about it and move on to the next one. All that said, if they can pull it off at a reasonable cost, they should absolutely go for it. I think the key is a street race with as much mountain in the background as possible: that will differentiate Cape Town from the plethora of other emerging market venues that flash by every two weeks. Could they run it on Chapman’s Peak?