POWERLIFTER YULE IS ALL SET TO RULE

WEIGHTLIFTER Micky Yule is returning to Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games – 12 years after waking up from a coma as a double amputee in the city.

Yule (top) will be a flagbearer for Team Scotland at tonight’s opening ceremony, alongside two-time Commonwealth badminton medallist Kirsty Gilmour, who is looking to complete the set following silver and bronze at Glasgow and the Gold Coast respectively.

In July 2010, Yule, now 43, stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED) while serving as a Royal Engineer search advisor in Afghanistan, which caused him to lose both legs and endure a shattered pelvis and fractured arm.

He has undergone over 40 operations since losing his legs and is grateful to the staff at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital who helped save his life.

He said: “It’s a strange feeling. I flew in here in a coma from

Afghanistan and then spent eight weeks getting patched up and in surgeries, sometimes being quite close to everything going wrong.

“But I’m back here. The people at Queen Elizabeth Hospital saved my life.

“It’s not all bad, it’s mixed feelings, but to be back here on a real positive note to try and win a medal for your country and be the flagbearer, I think it comes full circle to where things started 10 years ago.”

Six years after suffering those lifechanging injuries, he was chosen to compete as a Paralympic powerlifter at Rio 2016.

Since then, Yule (above) has become a bronze medallist at the Tokyo Paralympic Games, as well as achieving respective gold and silver in the 2020 and 2021 World Cups, which were both held in Manchester.

And Yule is hungry to add more medals to his growing collection.

He added: “It’s the first time I’ve turned up at a Commonwealth Games not injured. I’m in the best place I’ve ever been. We’ll take the day as it comes but I’ll be looking to medal and it’ll be the only thing on my mind.”