When athlete details are listed, Vicky Belando Nicholson’s birthplace is listed as “unknown”.
We don’t know where her journey to Glasgow began, but we do know one of the earliest, terrifying moments when a young baby was pulled lifeless from the Mediterranean after falling off a refugee boat in 2008.
Her sister, Destiny, was aboard. Her birth mother, whose name we also do not know, had died.
Vicky and Destiny were taken to an orphanage in Malta, where they lived for a couple of years.
At the same time, two people just happened to be trying to adopt a child: Australian Ewan and Spanish wife Susana.
“We got a cold call from social services saying: ‘We’ve got two girls here, two and three years old, who are in an orphanage in Malta. Would you be interested in adopting them?'” Ewan told the Sydney Morning Herald this month.
The family lived in Malta, then Spain, before moving to Australia in 2021.
Vicky – who has a condition called fibular hemimelia, meaning she is missing part of the smaller bone in the lower leg – had every reason in the world to never want to see water again.
Belando Nicholson was sixth at the turn and stormed home. (Getty Images: Michael Steele)
On Sunday night in Glasgow, she won Commonwealth Games bronze in the women’s 100m backstroke S9 with a frankly stunning swim, coming from sixth at the turn to win her first bit of major jewellery.
“It’s a bit of a 360 moment,” she said.
“When I first started swimming, I was always scared of the water and now to be a bronze medallist for the Commonwealth Games is just absolutely amazing and hopefully there’s more to come.
“Coming into this event I wasn’t ranked high enough, but I ended up coming third, so anything can happen. Just believe.”
To make the moment all the more special, she was joined on her first podium in her first final at her first meet with the Australian team, by her 16-year-old bestie, silver medallist Gemma Sellick.
Besties bound by brilliance. (Getty Images: Michael Steele)
“I’m so proud of her,” Sellick said.
“I know we’ve both worked so hard for this and it makes the moment feel even better knowing I can share it with Vicky and very grateful that we got to share our first together.”
The moment was almost too perfect to wish for.
“This was not even a thought I had, I was not expecting this at all,” Belando Nicholson said.
“To do it with my best friend is actually insane.”
For a young woman who has had so much focus on her remarkable history, this feels like the beginning of a spectacular future.
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