Inglis aims for mat return after Vietnam bike crash

By AFP   July 29, 2016 | 09:44 pm PT
British judo star Stephanie Inglis had suffered serious head injuries after a motorbike crash in Vietnam.

Inglis, a silver medallist on home soil at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, suffered severe head injuries on May 12.

The 27-year-old's skirt got caught in a wheel and pulled her off the bike as she travelled to a school where she had been teaching English to under-privileged children for several months.

She arrived back in Scotland in mid-June and was treated at Edinburgh's Western General Hospital before moving to a specialist unit in Fife.

Inglis is now heading to her home in the Highlands to continue her recovery. Doctors in Vietnam were initially extremely pessimistic about her chances of survival, rating them at one percent, with her injuries including fracturing her neck in two places.

An online fundraising campaign launched by fellow judoka Khalid Ghelan helped raise more than £327,000 ($431,931) for the cost of her treatment.

Inglis, in an interview with the BBC published Friday, said: "The goal is to obviously get back into a normal way of life and, well, judo for me was normal, I've been doing it since I was four.

"To not be able to do judo, that wouldn't be my normal life, so probably after the year I'll start looking at getting back into the sport and doing some training to get my fitness and all that back.

"But for now, because I'm going back up to Inverness, I'll help at my Dad's judo club, help coach so at least I'm in and around it and can be involved because I do miss it."

Robert Inglis, Stephanie's father, attributed his daughter's recovery down to the "fighting spirit" she had developed through years of judo practice.

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