All going swimmingly for Ahmed

All going swimmingly for Ahmed






Swimmer Ahmed Kelly has drawn praise from Greg Hartung, President of the Australian Paralympic Committee (APC), after closing in on his ambition of competing at the London 2012 Paralympic Games for his adopted country.


The 20-year-old (pictured) was born in Iraq with significant deficiencies in all four limbs and was spent the majority of the first seven years of his life at a Baghdad orphanage. However, in 1998 he met Moira Kelly, from the Children's First Foundation, who adopted Ahmed and brother Emmanuel – also born with limb deficiencies – and took them to Australia for medical treatment.


After undergoing surgery to remove the deformed sections of his lower legs, Ahmed learned to walk with the use of prostheses and, before long, began to run. He subsequently turned his attention to swimming in 2008 and aside from being one of Australia's biggest medal prospects at London 2012 is now among the favourites for gold in his events. During his quest for victory this summer, Ahmed will have two special supporters cheering him on: his adopted sisters, Trishna and Krishna.


The conjoined twins were separated during more than 27 hours of surgery in 2009 and Ahmed says the support of his sisters always pushes him forward a couple of metres in every race. Hartung, also vice-president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), believes Ahmed should serve as an inspiration to all who see him compete. "For swimmer Ahmed Kelly, the road to London has been a particularly long one," said Hartung.


"After years of operations, rehabilitation and adapting to a new country, he is now the 100 metres breaststroke world record holder in his class and has London firmly in his sights. "Ahmed's ambition and perseverance against the odds resonates with all who hear his story. "Like all our athletes, his readiness to take on the world in Australian colours is inspiring and something I know all Australians will embrace."


Since competing at his first international competition, the 2009 Oceania Paralympic Championships in Darwin, Ahmed has gone on to claim back-to-back 100m breaststroke crowns at the Australian Championships in 2010 and 2011, with both victories being recorded in world record time.


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Labels: Australia, Australian Olympics Committee, Disability, Inspiration, Iraq, Iraq Media, Iraqi Sports, London, London 2012, News, Paralympics, Sports, Swimming, The BBC





The Onward Soldiers March






My recent blog post Healing Injuries Through Sports, focused on the role that service men and women were making in the world of disabled sports and how with the use of adaptations are able to participate in activities, that some may have felt no longer able to do.


Service members who participate in adaptive sports, especially through training camps, gain a new sense of self-purpose, where through intensive training; instructors have witnessed a “massive transformation” in the outlook of participants.


Many recovering service members, who participate in adaptive sports and athletic reconditioning, also enjoy mental and emotional benefits from increased physical activity. The Marine Corps also pairs new athletes with mentors, usually older veterans, who have already triumphed over similar experiences.


Adaptive sports for injured military personnel, particularly through training offered by each of the Military Services, also prepares athletes for competitive events such as the Warrior Games, which will begin at the end of the month and will run through to May 5th , in Colorado Springs, USA.


According to Tom Hopkins, project manager for the Marine Corps’ Warrior Athlete Reconditioning Program, adaptive sports opportunities continue even when wounded warriors transition to veteran status. The Veterans Administration’s Adaptive Sports Program works with VA staff, the U.S. Paralympics and other community-based adaptive sports organisations, to encourage disabled veterans to redefine themselves by participating or competing.




Some veterans, who are training in their respective sports, are provided a monthly allowance by the VA. In addition, the VA also provides grants to U.S. Paralympics member organisations, Paralympic Sports Clubs, along with other veteran and military groups.


The goal of any adaptive sports program is to show athletes that they are capable of more than they think. There is no limit to the adaptations that can be made to sporting equipment, including bicycles, rifles and archery bows.


As Tom Hopkins also pointed out, “If the desire is there, there is always an engineer or someone who can transform the apparatus to meet the requirements needed.” Some adaptations now include a shooting system for visually impaired athletes that beep when the shooter is within target range, as well as bikes that can be fitted for single amputees, double amputees, triple amputees and quadriplegics.


By Hussein Al-alak and for further reading includes Wounded warriors are right on target and you can also follow the Warrior Games on Facebook



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Labels: Department of Veterans Affairs, Disability, Hussein Al-alak, Iraqi Solidarity News, News, Sports, The BBC, The Iraq Solidarity Campaign, The USA, Warrior Games, Wounded Warriors



Sgt. dies before new home finished






An injured soldier who struggled daily to overcome the physical challenges left by an explosion in Iraq died early Sunday morning in his sleep, just two weeks before a home being built for him and his family was due to be finished.Sgt. Kevin White, 29, leaves behind his wife, Juliane, and a 15-month-old son, Liam, who now will move into their new home without him.
White, a paratrooper in Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, was the most severely injured of the soldiers involved in an April 2007 ambush of their convoy in Iraq.He was in his second tour when a piece of a rocket warhead went through his shoulder and into his lung. He also sustained a brain injury.
He was released from duty with a medical retirement, and the extent of his injuries made it impossible to work. With medical bills mounting and his wife pregnant at the time, White’s in-laws, Ann and O.T. Green, decided to build them a house next door to their home near Lakeside.
The Greens took out a second mortgage on their own home, emptied Ann’s retirement account and started building in 2010.“We’re about two weeks away from being finished,” O.T. Green said.The White family has been living with Greens while the home was being built.
It will be a couple of weeks before the results of an autopsy are known to determine a cause of death, Green said.The family is thankful to have some happy memories from the day before White’s death. They all had gone to a gun show at the fairgrounds in Kalispell, where White had purchased a pocket watch.
“He was happy and upbeat,” Green said. “He signed up to go turkey hunting with a group of other veterans.”As they left the gun show, White announced in the parking lot: “We need a group hug.”So the entire family gathered together for what would be their final embrace.“It’s a wonderful memory to have,” Green said.
Saturday evening, Green and his son-in-law took a walk-through of the new home, determining where wiring for the TV and other electronics would go.“He went to bed about 12:30 or 1:00,” Green said. “Juliane came down about 11 the next morning and said she couldn’t wake him.”Family members tried to revive him, but he had already died.
“He had so much going for him,” Green said. “He was so upbeat. I’ve always told my family, ‘Life is like playing a card game. You never know what card is coming out of the deck, but you have to deal with it.’“Capt. Steven Wilson, the commander on the ground the day White and other soldiers were injured, called White an outstanding paratrooper and a team player with impressive leadership skills.
“He took initiative and had the kind of personality that you could trust him to execute the mission,” Wilson said in a phone interview from Fort Bragg, where he now works with the Warrior Transition Battalion. “He was a ‘glass half full’ kind of guy, a good guy all around, very intelligent.”
Wilson said on the day of the attack, White and others in his convoy were making condolence payments to Iraqi citizens whose property had been damaged. They had stopped at an Iraqi police station when they were ambushed.In a January interview with the Daily Inter Lake, White detailed his injuries, explaining how a hematoma in his head had calcified and turned to bone, “so I have a random bone in my brain that’s pressing on my optic nerve.”
White also told how he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder.Despite the severity of his injuries, the federal government declared him as having a low-ranking disability — so low that he didn’t receive enough in disability payments to live on.White’s wife has a heart condition that limits her ability to work. Green said Juliane was scheduled to have a procedure done in Spokane, Wash., this week that now will be postponed so she could say her final goodbye to her husband at a celebration of life service planned Friday.
Green said his son-in-law was one of the military’s “walking wounded.”“To look at him, he looks fine, but there’s a lot that’s not showing,” he said in January.The Greens rallied community support for the home-building project and raised between $2,000 and $3,000.“My wife wrote a thank-you note to every person who contributed,” Green said. “Even Sarah Palin sent us $5.”Glacier Bank has been wonderful to work with, he noted. But the reality is the Greens are “up to our necks” in mortgage payments.
A housing fund set up earlier will remain in place. Donations can be made to: Kevin Housing Fund, in care of Flathead Bank of Lakeside, P.O. Box 769, Lakeside, MT 59922.
“We’ll take care of his family,” Green said. “That’s all we can do now.”
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