Ricky Betar started swimming as a child for fun, but as he progressed through squad level and into club swimming it became clear Ricky was a natural.
Ricky, who has autism and swims in the S14 classification was born in Osaka, moving to Australia to be closer to family, before his first birthday.
The now Queenslander burst onto the international Para-swimming scene at 15-years-old.
He broke the INAS (International Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability) 50m freestyle world record as part of a five-medal haul at the 2019 Australian Championships that punched his ticket to the World Para Swimming Championships in London.
At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, he teamed up with Madeleine McTernan, Ruby Storm, and Benjamin Hance in the Mixed 4 x 100m freestyle S14 to win a silver medal. The team were just under 6 seconds behind the winners, Great Britain, who set a world record.
Ricky …
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Ricky Betar started swimming as a child for fun, but as he progressed through squad level and into club swimming it became clear Ricky was a natural.
Ricky, who has autism and swims in the S14 classification was born in Osaka, moving to Australia to be closer to family, before his first birthday.
The now Queenslander burst onto the international Para-swimming scene at 15-years-old.
He broke the INAS (International Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability) 50m freestyle world record as part of a five-medal haul at the 2019 Australian Championships that punched his ticket to the World Para Swimming Championships in London.
At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, he teamed up with Madeleine McTernan, Ruby Storm, and Benjamin Hance in the Mixed 4 x 100m freestyle S14 to win a silver medal. The team were just under 6 seconds behind the winners, Great Britain, who set a world record.
Ricky also qualified for the finals in the 200m freestyle S14 and 100m butterfly S14 and finished seventh and eighth respectively.
Ricky is an inaugural recipient of the Kurt Fearnley Scholarship and is hoping to model his own professional sports career after Kurt.
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