Fairytale gold for Aussie boxer with tragic family history

Australian boxer Skye Nicolson won a fairytale gold medal on Saturday as one of the faces of the Commonwealth Games triumphed in memory of the late brother she never met.

The 22-year-old featherweight earned a split-points decision victory over Northern Ireland’s Michaela Walsh, who will count herself unlucky having appeared to have the better of their final.

Nicolson, described by one local newspaper as “the fast-moving southpaw with the catwalk model looks”, has been prominent in Australian media during the Games on the Gold Coast because of her tragic family background.

Her brother Jamie was a highly rated Olympic and then professional boxer who was killed in a car crash in 1994 along with another brother, the younger Gavin, as they headed to boxing training.

Nicolson was born a year after the tragedy and inherited the fighting genes which run through the family.

And like Jamie, she is an awkward southpaw who likes to counter-attack. Many also say that the siblings who never met look uncannily alike.

A teary-eyed Walsh, 24, earns silver but was left devastated, putting her hands over her face at one point during the medal ceremony as she battled her emotions. (AFP)