Micky Yule on defying the doctors and battling for his big break in the Gold Coast

in matter-of-fact fashion, with barely a trace of self-pity, merely the imperative to “keep on grinding”.

You may remember this larger-than-life former staff sergeant in the

Royal Engineers from the last Commonwealth Games, a fourth-place finish in the +72kg category in Glasgow scarcely doing justice to the impact made by a man who only embarked on a career in powerlifting after losing the use of both legs after standing on an improvised explosive device (IED) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2010.

But it turns out the fates were only getting started on this redoubtable 39-year-old double amputee, born in Edinburgh but now resident in Lincoln. After a sixth-place finish in a lighter weight category for Team GB

at the Rio Olympics in 2016 – “I was sitting at 8% body fat and I still had about 4 kilos to lose,” he recalls – things really went awry some four months back when Yule put his hands up for a Ministry of Defence trial into some cutting-edge technology which could aid the mobility of amputees across Britain in years to come.

“They drill out your femurs [thigh bones], scoop out all the bone marrow and that stuff, then they hammer titanium rods up into them,” Yule tells Herald Sport. “So, instead of you wearing sockets which slip over your stumps, your prosthetics are now connected to the metal which actually hangs out of your legs, connecting directly to your bone. It is like X-men, really crazy stuff.

“But what happened when I did the procedure,” he continued, “was that because my bones were so dense and strong and they were committed to putting the implants in, they had to hammer it in so hard that they broke my leg. I woke up with implants in me – but being told that they had to shatter my leg to get them in.”

From there it was three months of intensive rehab, in “just unbelievable pain” before an X-Ray the Monday before Christmas revealed the grateful news that the fracture had healed successfully.

It was a joyous early Christmas present, at least until the following Saturday – December 23, the day before Yule’s birthday – when simply hanging about the house. “I was stood on my driveway on the Saturday and my leg just folded underneath me,” says Yule, “and my femur broke again, above the implant, it just split in two. A really nasty break.”

Feeling incapacitated, helpless until his wife Jody could return to help him, all the trauma of Afghanistan briefly returned. “It gave me a right flashback,” said Yule. “I was folded and sat on my arse in excruciating pain and the last time I was like

that was when I got blown up in Afghanistan. So I just sat there in pain and couldn’t do nothing.

“This time I was sitting there just waiting on my wife phoning, back then I was waiting for my colleagues to come and save my life. So I had to deal with that all over again,” he added.

“Sometimes you think you are over that kind of PTS [post traumatic stress] bullshit and it comes back and bites you on the arse. So I spoke to a few pals and professionals and I feel like I am on top of it now.”

Compared to that, you might think that worries about selection for Team Scotland for the springtime showpiece on the Queensland coast were small beer. If you think that, you don’t know Micky Yule very well. Before long, doctors and physios had been persuaded to bring a set of dumb bells into the hospital ward.

“All this time I was waiting on the team being announced, knowing I

was sitting second or third in the Commonwealth rankings but knowing that Team Scotland were probably looking at my Twitter and thinking ‘he has just broken his leg, what the hell is he going to do now?’

So I was speaking to my coaches and saying ‘look, I am bench pressing,

I will be fine’. I’ve been told too many times I can’t do something.”

Further consultations are planned with doctors and surgeons in the next seven days while the run-up to the games will see him learn to walk for a fourth time – “that is something you should only have to do once,” he says darkly – but Yule has made the team and now has 12 weeks to get himself into shape for a medal.

It is customary for performers on the eve of a big occasion to be told to break a leg, but such an outcome is no laughing matter when it comes to Yule. The 39-year-old, in fact, says he is likely to be lifting on the day with one, as it typically takes something in this order to fully heal. And if the bone should snap for a third time under the strain of his upper body and the 190-odd kg he is lifting then, according to Yule, so be it.

“It looks like I might actually be lifting out there with a broken leg,” says Yule. “Because this femur break is so bad it looks like it might take six weeks to heal. So we will see what happens on the day with that one.

“I strap over the leg, I strap my legs down to make sure that they don’t spring back if you see what I mean,” he added. “So there is 190kg on the bar, my upper body is around 50kg, and it is on that strap. I lift on April 10 and I will probably strap for the first time at the very last minute to give my leg the best chance. Then, if I get out there and lift and my leg breaks, then it breaks – I don’t care. I would rather it breaks trying to win a medal.”

There are other diverting details too, such as the fact Yule has now had 50 operations, removed 40 staples from his own thigh and has taken himself off all the painkillers to remind himself of the pain threshold he must endure come the Commonwealth Games. There is also a big thanks to his long-time personal coach Neil Crombie for keeping him sane amid the incessant injury setbacks.

“There were risks [to the trial] but

I am actually the only one who has ever broken their leg through the procedure,” said Yule. “And I am also the first person to re-fracture their leg. My mum thinks we must have a gypsies’ curse against us.

“That is me had more than 50 major operations or surgeries, and just when you think ‘no more,’ you are standing in the driveway and your leg folds from under you. But you have to be strong in the mind, man. You just have to keep going.

“I have had to take myself off the painkillers,” he added. “I think my wife is losing the will to live because of it but I have to do it. I can’t take the morphine because it dulls the senses and I have to be in pain, train hard,

let my body get abused, then recover.

“I took my staples out the other day because they were just nipping my legs a little bit when I was trying to train. There were about 40 staples because what they ended up doing was attaching a big plate on top of the implant, with a big bolt through the femur head. One of my mates said that the surgeon must have designed the Forth Bridge too!

“I’ll be as strong as ever come the Gold Coast. My mind is the strongest part of my body and I will make it. All I need to do is take my mind through that dark place, that misery. I have got 12 weeks – give me 12 weeks before any competition and I will be fine.

I am training like a madman now.

“It would mean everything to have

a Commonwealth medal. Sometimes you think you are in a brilliant place, on a roll, and then you smash your leg in twice. To make it on that podium, that is what I am trying to visualise, how good would that be? You don’t give in, you just keep on grinding, and you might just get there.”