Catching Up With…Broc Hepler

Brendan Lutes

• February 22 2009
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• 8 comments

Words and Photos by Brendan Lutes

After breaking his collarbone during the first five minutes of the first practice of the year, Team Yamaha’s Broc Hepler’s season nearly ended before it even began. Now fully healed up from that, Hepler is ready to race. But after crashing again at his first round back in San Diego, Hepler is yet again nursing another injury—his wrist. We spoke to him before the racing go underway in Atlanta.s

We haven’t really had a chance to catch up with you since you broke your collarbone. How has everything been going?
Since my collarbone injury, everything feels good. My collarbone is 100 percent, but I’m just lacking a little bit of riding time, especially with the rain that we’ve had in California lately. It’s been a little hard to ride Supercross and get back into things, but I think overall the first race back was a success even though the finish didn’t show that.

When you broke your collarbone, how did it all go down?
It was in the first five or ten minutes of the first practice at Anaheim I. I was just going through the whoops and the front wheel dropped in pretty violently, ripping my hand off the handlebars. The bike endoed me into the bowl turn at the end, so that got my collarbone.

I’ve seen the picture of you lying on the ground with your neck brace blown apart, and I noticed that you weren’t wearing the brace at San Diego. Is there a reason for that?
I think everyone knows that the brace is probably going to break your collarbone. It might have saved my neck, which is a good thing, but I really haven’t tried the brace again since I started riding again. I don’t even like anyone touching my shoulder right now, so I don’t think I want that resting on there. I don’t know if I’m going to wear it down the road again, but I’m just not running it right now.

Last week, you crashed again. How’s your wrist feeling from that crash?
I haven’t ridden all week. I’m probably going to tape it up a little bit. It will probably be alright. We X-Rayed it at the track when it happened and I got it X-Rayed again this past week just to make sure there wasn’t anything broken. It’s probably just some tissue that got pinched when my wrist got bent as far back as it did.

How did you injure your wrist last week?
We were jumping a table-to-table then tripling out. I just over jumped the table-to-table too much and landed in the pocket before the triple. I think that when I landed that hard was when I hurt my wrist. I still got endoed after that, but I think the majority of the damage was done when I over jumped the table-to-table.

Now that you have some racing under your belt, what are your goals for the rest of the season?
I was actually sixth fastest in the main event in San Diego, so I think a goal to start getting top-fives would be good. I want to start finishing in the top-five at the end of the race, and hopefully I can work my way up to a podium finish by the end of the season, that would set me up good for outdoors.