Sam Bramham
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| Full name | Sam Julian Bramham | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Australian | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
23 May 1988 Melbourne |
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| Height | 1.74 m (5 ft 9 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Carey Tritons | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Sam Julian Bramham, OAM (born 23 May 1988) is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. He competed at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Paralympics. Between those two Games, he won two gold medals, two silver medals and a bronze medal. On 9 September 2014 Bramham entered the eleventh season of Big Brother Australia.
Bramham tells several stories about how he lost his leg; one story involves his leg being eaten off by an alligator. Another story is that a shark attacked him. A third story, one he often tells international journalists, involves his leg being "chomped off by a kangaroo". The reality is that he was born missing part of his limb: he has no femur. What remained of his leg was amputated when he was five years old.
Bramham was born on 23 May 1988 and is from Ivanhoe, Victoria, where he attended Ivanhoe Grammar School. One of his heroes is Geoff Huegill. Outside of swimming, he competes at water polo, Australian rules football and rugby union. Amongst these sports, rugby union was his preferred sport, and he played it at school until the school removed him from the team, citing concerns that his prosthetic leg may potentially injure his team mates and opposing players. Not being able to play his first choice sport was one of the reasons he got involved with swimming.
Bramham first represented Australia internationally in 2004. His highest international ranking ever is number one. He is coached by Matt Byrne of the Tritons Swimming Club. In 2000, he competed at the Pacific School Games. In 2006, he competed in the World Championships in Berlin, Germany where he set a world record and won a gold medal. To Bramah's disappointment, four months before the start of the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne, Victoria, the games announced they would not include Elite Athletes with Disability butterfly swimming on the event schedule. To qualify for the Commonwealth Games, he switched to and qualified to compete in the 100 m freestyle. In 2011, he competed in the Can-Am Swimming Open, where he earned gold medals in two events: S9 100 m freestyle and 50 m and 100 m butterfly. He has been an Australian Institute of Sport paralympic swimming and Victorian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.
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