Ahmed Kelly | Power of Being Positive | Dirrum Festival #CBR20

Introduction to me the most impressive thing about ahmed is what he's made of his story ahmed is an australian national champion a two-time paralympian in swimming and is aiming for third paralympics he's also a multi-class world record holder and is studying a bachelor of arts at la trobe university on top of his swimming commitments at the national training centre at the ais every time i see ahmed at the pool he's always smiling and happy when you speak to him it feels as though you are the single most important thing to him in that moment because you are no matter who he's speaking to um it is constantly positive and attentive so on that note i'm so excited to introduce ahmed with his talk titled the power of being positive please make him feel welcome [Applause] good evening everybody i've heard i hope you've all had a wonderful uh evening so far chelsea thank you so much for that introduction uh we live in a world with infinite Ahmed Kelly: Power of Being Positive possibilities uh granted right now this is not so we've covert and everything like that but outside of that we do live in a world with infinite possibilities and it is up to us to make the most of our opportunities and to do so in the right attitude a negative one will lead to doors being shut a positive one will lead you to doing things that you wouldn't have thought you would be doing so if you asked me as a young child or heck even as a young teenager that i would have an opportunity to represent australia i wouldn't have thought that was going to be possible but here i am working very hard towards my third paralympic games and one i couldn't do so on my own so i thought i'd take you quickly through a journey of mine as a young child all i ever wanted to do was make the most of every day that's what every child does we we don't really care about who what the what people are judging us on or the different thoughts but i got this amazing opportunity in 2000 by a lady called moira kelly who brought both emanuel and i to australia to receive life's life-changing operations now i had no idea what to expect all i ever wanted to do was to be able to walk like everybody else because i was born with deformed legs legs are so crooked that after 100 meters or so i would be in so much pain so i had to have to sit down and try and take a rest now 100 meters may seem quite a distance but we we all roughly walk around 5ks a day roughly and 100 meters to be in pain a lot is is not a good thing so i got this opportunity and to be honest with you i had no idea what to expect but all i ever wanted to do was to be able to walk like everybody else uh we came to australia the sense of freedom was incredible we went to this house that was built for my mom to do incredible charity work and have kids from all over the world they needed life-saving and life-changing operation so i had this house in a country town called kilmore which is about an hour's drive north from melbourne and i remember coming to this house and seeing all these kids everybody had different uh sort of conditions and it just puts everything into perspective and all of a sudden i realize well i haven't got it so tough we sometimes take things for granted and when you just see somebody who's like who's pretty much and he's a heart surgeon if he doesn't have a heart surgery he could potentially die you just don't know so all that is put into perspective and you get to move on so fast and you you're in an environment where you know okay what can i achieve today what what are the different things i can do for somebody else so growing up as a kid i had that sort of environment and it's probably helped shape who i am today so when the day came that i had to have my surgery i was pretty nervous but i had an idea of what everybody else had gone through and i know somewhat what to expect but still it was quite nerve-wracking for me and i remember the doctors the nurse tried to talk down a lot and after the surgery i'd woken up with such agony pain that i'd never felt before so what the doctors had done is remove the feet and formed a nice nice stump shape on my lens so i could wear prosthetic legs and all the all that sounded awesome but the pain that i had to go through was incredible but that was the negative thought is that yes i'm in a lot of pain but the positive thought that i quickly turned to was that i want to be able to walk like everybody else i was in hospital for about a week i did probably [Music] three to five months of recovery just to get to heal and before i could start the process of hopefully getting new legs so once the five months had gone over i was pretty much ready to get these legs uh fitted uh shaped all those sort of stuff and i remember a few months later when they were all pretty much ready i was at this clinic and it was a day that was going to change my life i was going to be wearing these legs and i would be able to walk like everybody else and with no pain this was such an incredible day to me and from that day everything changed there were no boundaries it was all possibilities for me again and i remember going to school being able to join all my friends with all the different sports and it just gave me so much excitement and exhilaration as well uh we all have lots of different passion which leads us to where we are today uh some will want to be musicians some will want to be storytellers some will be um singers we all have different gifts and talents and today i found out chelsea could sing which is quite incredible so not only she's a phenomenal swimmer she can also sing so she's a double our talent over here she's great but we all have different talents and gifts and i urge everybody to take those gifts and really do something about it and do not be afraid of what what people are going to think or maybe you're not going to be accepted i reckon you should grab it and do you the best you can so i remember the reason why i got into sport was i was inspired by an afl football match my mother was inspired to do the charity work through mother teresa now i wish i could say that but i can't really um but this football this story football match as my mum would call it had inspired me to take on sports and i remember going back to school the week um the next week and wanting to play footy with all my friends and i was terrible to start with i'll be honest with you but i kept practicing i kept practicing and then went on to try outs for the great six footy team and i was successful there again that wasn't because i i mean you can have a spot i had to work really hard now whilst you want to do something you've got to be prepared to do the hard work it can't all just happen straight away so i remember the tryouts being quite tough but it was something i'd prepared for again i succeeded and went on to represent the great six footy team a year later went into high school representing my high school assumption college then my local team which is where i pretty much found my foot in as well so i ended up kicking a few goals captained a team for one of the games above all i just enjoyed what i was doing it was an amazing time but then some things have to come to an end and for me it was when i was getting ready to join the senior footy team both my mom and my coach were really concerned about the physical aspects of the sport and what that was going to do to my body and my knees these legs do weigh about two and a half kilos each roughly okay that's just an estimate so you're trying to run around with those they're not really designed to be running around on a football field they're designed for you to do walking and slight leisure sort of activities but nothing too extreme but i didn't care i took them as far as i could um so i remember them giving me this hard talk and this theme is about the tipping point like how do you give up something you love so much and move on it was such a challenging time for me i did get offered a coaching position but i knew that if i took it up i wasn't going to be true to myself because i really still wanted to be a part of sport and being physically active myself so about a few months had gone by and i still hadn't made a decision what i was going to do and i had no idea and then finally the australian power on the big committee uh pound big australia today had this talent talent identification day where you could try out all the different sports and hopefully be able to represent australia at a paralympic games for me my nature was to try everything and i did do that i did really well in most sports but i felt that if i was going to take up a sport you need the one ingredient that i had when i was playing footy passion if you don't have passion it's hard to take something really beyond the expectations that you might have okay so if you have passion you'll go a long way with it so i was really um passionate about swimming and i knew that i could have small goals leading to those big goals that small goal first ended up being okay let's get in the pool to a few sessions then i ended up hopefully trying to make state teams then once i wanted to make the state teams i need to be classified now that's a very long process i don't have time to talk about that today but i end up being a low category athlete okay there's not many of us in australia i think i'm one of three at the moment um but it was it was something to work towards all of a sudden you have a classification you knew i started looking up where i needed to be to make to the nationals to get to the nationals and then on to hopefully representing australia i had an amazing team behind me i had coaches so i remember doing like three or four sessions in the country moving to melbourne to try and really take up swimming seriously i went from about four sessions to 12 sessions by the end of that first week of doing 12 sessions i honestly felt like a trainer hit my body that was so sore but after a while you got used to that pain you got used to being uncomfortable as elite athletes we have to be get used to being uncomfortable because not everything's going to go our way and we have to learn to adapt in different scenarios and i remember making my very first nationals i was so excited i had finally gotten over the state level got to nationals i qualified in two events my first event was 100 meter breaststroke i was so excited i was so nervous everybody was on the block and i'm so madly trying to get my legs off and i race over i race over to to lane um uh nine get on the blocks and i remember in marshalling i had to put these goggles on my forehead and um i get on the blocks i'm so nervous because i've just held up the whole race and give the all clear to the ref take your marks and the buzzer goes and we all dive in did the split strike for breaststroke and then i'm like oh no what i've forgotten to do is put these blessed goggles down and i had to swim the entire 100 meters with these goggles in front of my forehead and all this water gushing right in front of my face it's such an unkind of uncomfortable feeling but as i said athletes we have to get we have to learn to adapt and what i really need to do is say stay positive take 25 um 25 minutes as it came then the turn and then before you know it the race was over i mean i was glad i finished the race to start with i was nowhere near my pb but it was under the qualifying qualifying time which was a relief to me from then on i went on to making the development team and then really never looked back i was in a very good position to make my first paralympic games which was london 2012 and i remember the 100 meter brushstroke which was my strength wasn't an event at the panel big game so all of a sudden i had to go from a sort of a mid distance to me to a sprinter so i had a year to really work hard and i just scraped in and i was so excited i remember reading this letter saying i was part of the 34 athlete uh 34 athletes going to london it was it was like a dream come true and all the hard work had come come to play and i was ready to go on the plane it was just an incredible feeling how do you describe wearing the green and gold how do you describe being able to wear that gold cap and a pool it's really really hard but it is such an honor okay it's a privilege and it's not something anybody can do you have to really work hard for it and to be able to do that is an incredible feeling i remember in london all my um my goal was to give it my best shot i had nothing to lose that's all i wanted my attitude was to give my best end up walking away with a pb finishing fourth overall in the 50 meter brush stroke then you go to rio i wanted to be podium uh that was my goal was to get onto the podium but in rio i had a lot of different challenges i wasn't getting on well with my coach it's one of those things i've never had to deal with before and for me to deal with that it was quite challenging it reflected that in the pool so i went from like a fourth overall in london to about seventh but it was all about managing expectation that's what i learned from here is how do you manage experience well i wanted to i compared to london i wanted to be able to be on podium and that didn't happen so i'm going to tokyo now i decided to do something different i've moved to then to ais and really try to work with yuri who is going to be on the australian team as well and i really have to work hard to try and make the parallel big games again and to hopefully get back on to uh the podium potential of power of the games and whilst it's never guaranteed that you're going to get a spot i'm working very hard so tokyo has been delayed and it's quite annoying but it gives me another chance another year to perfect those things and the skills well elite athletes are quite um fit okay everybody's really fit when they get on the blocks and it's so important you work on the skills because the first thing that goes when you're really really tired in the pool is your skills okay and then then you start fatigue and you start slowing down but it's so important that we work on the skills and for them to come like as of second nature yeah i have to really think about it so in tokyo i'm no longer a brushstroker anymore i mean brushstroke is still an event but now i'm focused on the 150 meter individual individual medley which i end up getting silver last year at the world championship so it's going to be exciting and it's gonna be awesome to have all the support behind me and i would love to do you all proud and get on that podium so thank you so much for having me part of your festival i wish you the best of luck for whatever it is your goals and your future ambitions are and really make the most of all your opportunities thank you so much