Paralympian swimmer Ahmed Kelly won his second silver medal last week, a back-to-back silver for the inspirational athlete who made it to the top on day four of the Paralympic Games Paris 2024.
On Sunday, September 1, Kelly swum in the men’s 150m individual medley SM3 heat along with fellow Australian athlete Grant Patterson, but Kelly was disqualified.
The event included one lap of backstroke, then another of breaststroke, and finally the home lap of freestyle.
Officials believed Kelly was breaking the rules by swimming butterfly in the final lap, but underwater cameras clearly showed otherwise, and his swim was reinstated.
Kelly acknowledged the mistake in a Twitter statement.
“They make mistakes. Officials are humans,” he said.
“I’ve got quite a unique freestyle [stroke] that may look like it’s butterfly, but in fact … it’s not exactly butterfly.”
Kelly is an SM3 class athlete, a para-swimming classification used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability.
Kelly was born in Iraq with underdeveloped limbs, the result of exposure to chemical weapons, and until the age of nine he grew up in an orphanage in Baghdad with his brother, Emmanuel.
Around the age of seven, he and his brother caught the heart of humanitarian worker Moira Kelly, and she adopted them and brought them home to Kilmore, where they attended both St Patrick’s Primary School and Assumption College Kilmore.
“The disqualification couldn’t really throw me completely off the rails. I’ve gone through a lot worse,” Kelly said.
Kelly went on to win a silver medal in the event, while Patterson won bronze. It’s the second time the Dolphin teammates have finished in the same order – the last time was at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020.
The Government will provide Australia’s para-athletes with the same financial incentives for winning medals at the Games as able-bodied Olympians.
The Paralympics have now concluded, with Australia finishing ninth on the ladder with 18 gold, 10 silver, and 17 bronze medals.
