Nathan MacQueen wins mental battle in bid for paralympic powerlifting spot

IN THE summer of 2009, a promising 17-year-old rugby player from Dumfries, Nathan MacQueen, crashed his motorbike head-on into a car, breaking three of his vertebrae and ending up in a wheelchair for life.

He has since gone on to represent Scotland at wheelchair basketball and now aims for next year’s Commonwealth Games as a paralympic power-lifter.

“I always say rugby saved my life,” said MacQueen, who turned out for Dumfries Colts and Saints and Murrayfield Wanderers. “I broke T9, 10 & 11 (vertebrae), both my femurs, all my ribs, internal bleeding and two punctured lungs – 29 bones in one sitting. The doctors didn’t think I was going to make it, but because I was so young they didn’t want to give up on me. They were going to put me on a steel lung, a kind of incubator thing, but my left lung re-inflated itself and they said it was because I was so fit from all the rugby.”

There is an unnerving calmness to MacQueen as he recounts the shocking details of the accident that changed his life forever nearly four years ago. Now, still only 21, he spends the majority of his time training and taking part in disabled powerlifting competitions in a bid to win a medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

It has, however, been a long and difficult rehabilitation since that fateful August morning in 2009. “I was in high dependency for about three months and then I went through to rehab where I had to wear a brace for eight weeks,” he said. “It was horrible. Then they chuck you on the floor and tell you to get back in your chair. They make you wheelie downstairs and stuff like that. It helps you. I’m not scared to go out by myself now because I know I can get down stairs or get back in my chair if I fall out”

The mental battle was also a real test of his spirit, especially after returning home. “I was properly down at that time because I couldn’t get outside to meet people and hang about with my friends. I thought that everyone had abandoned me. I didn’t think I would have friends anymore. The whole social thing of ‘Oh, he’s in a wheelchair’ but it was stupid for me to think like that because it wasn’t the fact.”

Ironically, he was deemed “not disabled enough” to play wheelchair rugby (you need to be tetraplegic) so he turned to wheelchair basketball at his local club, Lothian Phoenix in Bathgate, going on to gain three caps for Scotland before an email from Goals for Gold alerted him to the possibility of disabled powerlifting.

Eighteen months later and his enthusiasm for the sport shines bright in his eyes. He is currently ranked second in the UK in his weight class and has made remarkable progress.

“Able-bodied powerlifting has three disciplines – bench, clean and squat – but disabled powerlifting, because we can’t stand up, it’s just bench,” he explained. “They’ve made the bench super-hard though – so, so hard. They’ve made it so technical; it’s harder than able-bodied benching.

“I did 120kg at the UK Open but I need to get 140kg to qualify (for Glasgow 2014). I should make it because it’s only 20kg and I’ve got until April 2014 to get that so I’ve got plenty of time. I should get 140kg but I want to get more than that so that I’m not just qualifying. I want to go and be able to compete; I don’t just want to go there for the sake of being there.”