LET THE GAMES BEGIN
PAN PACIFIC PARA SWIMMERS ARRIVE IN CAIRNS:
ONCE a budding footballer in Victoria, Australian Paralympic swimmer Ahmed Kelly has kept his catchy nickname alive since switching codes.
Kelly and his 34 teammates arrived in the Far North yesterday afternoon for the Australian team’s Para Pan Pacific Championships camp before Tobruk Pool hosts the 2018 Para Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.
The 26-year-old Kelly goes by the name “Liquid Nails” and says it comes from his school days, playing Aussie rules at Assumption College, Kilmore.
“I really enjoyed my footy and my style of play was to get in there with the ball as hard as nails,” Kelly said. “Because I had to give up my footy and take on swimming, my mates said they could not call me Nails anymore.
“But, as I was going in the pool, I got the name Liquid Nails because I was in the water. I had to laugh when it came up, it is a hard name to carry on everywhere.”
Born in 1991 in Baghdad, Iraq with significant disabilities in all four limbs, Kelly was left at a Baghdad orphanage where he spent the majority of the first seven years of his life.
In 1998, he met Moira Kelly from the Children’s First Foundation who brought Ahmed and his brother Emmanuel, also born with limb deficiencies, to Australia for medical treatment.
He has gone on to represent the green and gold at the last two Paralympics and is keen to swim for more medals in the Far North this month.
“I am really looking forward to the relays, I love being in the team environments,” Kelly said.
“My main personal event is the 50m breaststroke.”
The Championships are on August 9-13.