Shan Moore | January 20, 2022
Broc Hepler talks about his long and winding road and his new venture into enduro racing.
Photos Courtesy Enduro Engineering/Josh Cairl
Career-ending injuries are commonplace in motorcycle racing. Some have an immediate effect, snuffing out a career in the blink of an eye, while other injuries are lingering and take their toll further down the line.
Broc Hepler’s was the lingering type. A concussion which saddled him with symptoms that popped up at the worst of times, leaving him dizzy, off balance and feeling “foggy.”
However, 16 years later, the Pennsylvania rider is back and has inked a deal that will see him racing the 2022 Kenda AMA National Enduro Series for XC Gear/Enduro Engineering/Husqvarna.
After a solid season with Makita Suzuki in 2006, Hepler signed with Yamaha to race Supercross and motocross in 2007. He had just come off three-straight wins and was a rising star on the motocross circuit. All of that came crashing down when a January crash while prepping for the upcoming SX season derailed everything.
Hepler was training at the Yamaha test track when he washed the front end and was thrown to the ground, suffering blunt force trauma to the brain, an injury that would have a major effect on the trajectory of the rest of his life.
“I was out about seven minutes or something,” says Hepler. “They transported me to the hospital. I know I was there three days, and I don’t remember the hospital at all. There was actually bleeding on the brain, so that’s when they have to keep you over to make sure once the bleeding stops. Then you have to stay there a day or so and make sure you’re good to go. I don’t recall any of the hospital there.”
Hepler sat out the rest of the season until outdoors that year, missing all of the 2007 Supercross season and into the outdoors, racing the final seven rounds but with little success.
“You never want to quit for good, but I think even all those years it was never quite as good as the days on my Suzuki, because my brain just wasn’t quite as good as it used to be, I guess.”
Hepler suffered several other injuries, as well, which he now attributes to effects of the concussion.
“My brain just couldn’t keep up with some of the pressure,” says Hepler. “Especially Supercross where any little mistake can be costly.”
Hepler came back to race in ’08 and ’09 but a mishap at the 2009 Las Vegas round proved to be the final straw.
“I got hit by Davi Millsaps in practice and it spiked my symptoms again even worse than what they were,” says Hepler. “So then in ’09 I didn’t do the outdoors, even though I was still employed with Yamaha. I’m just like, I can’t keep getting hurt like I was. I didn’t want any lifelong permanent injury by wrecking all the time like I had been. I think I had three surgeries within that year or something. So, it was like, if I keep riding the way I am and just trying to push through the brain injury, I’m going to hurt myself even worse. At that time, when the symptoms and stuff were that severe, even everyday life wasn’t that enjoyable. I would do therapy and whatnot and then I’d have to take long naps and stuff after even just driving for the symptoms to go away.”
Though he retired from pro racing in 2009, Hepler managed to ride a few local off-road events for fun.
“Once I decided to quit, still I would have friends like, ‘Let’s go riding.’ Which I still could, but when you’re not pushing yourself to the level to be a professional, you’re not taking the chances and stuff,” says Hepler. “So that’s why I was still riding a little for fun at home and stuff. The more I rode, then I was doing some dual sports, then I did some of the Aces Enduros in Ohio and in 2013 or ’14 I did the two-day ISDE qualifier in Ohio. So, I was doing those just because they were kind of linked with some of the dual-sport rides that I did and stuff.”
Though it’s been 16 years, the 35-year-old, who works as a substitute teacher, still suffers effects of his concussion.
“If there’s days where I’ve done a lot of head movement or working upside-down or something, then that can flare it up a little bit, so I try not to do too much. I have to watch some sit-ups and that kind of stuff.”
Last year, Hepler raced a few of the AMA National Enduro rounds in his area and did quite well, taking a second and two firsts in the Pro 2 class, which got the attention of Enduro Engineering’s Alan Randt.
“Alan asked me if I wanted to race the series for his team,” says Hepler. “I’m, like, retired now. I’m getting old. I couldn’t even give them an answer for a little while. I still wanted to keep it fun. I didn’t want the pressure to win, but I still put the pressure on myself. I eventually said yes and now it’s kind of my full-time job, but I’m not going to put the pressure on myself like I did back when I was racing professionally. We’re out there to win, but some days might not feel quite as good as others. I might not take the risk that I was.”
A handful of ex-motocross racers have made a successful jump to off-road, however, the enduro series has a unique format, compared to cross-country racing, and it’s probably a more difficult jump, with transfer trail linking six “all-out sprint” tests.
“I think it’s neat,” says Hepler. “I guess it’s kind of like you have six tries to get it right. Maybe the first one you could be down 30 seconds or a minute, but at least you have five more to try to fix your issue or make some adjustments, even if it’s just a rider change or getting in the right mindset. You have time to come back and fix things you need to work on. So, I think it’s neat that instead of more of a hare scramble setup where once you take off, if something you don’t like or something you did wrong you’ve got to ride it that way for three hours now.”
Hepler admits that one of the reasons he likes the enduro series is that it’s a lot more relaxed than Pro Motocross or Supercross. Any pressure he has, he puts on himself.
“You’re more in the corporate world with motocross and Supercross because you have so many mechanics, team managers,” says Hepler. “Not that they’re like, ‘You have to go out there and perform,’ but you put in so much work and everybody on the team puts in so much work that you don’t want to let anybody down. When you’re riding every day and training all the time, you believe you’re the best so when things aren’t going right you still go out there like, ‘I got to win, because I feel like I’m invincible.’ So, you don’t think you’re riding over your head, but you may be. That’s why you see, I think, some guys wreck more than others. Everyone puts so much effort into it that they don’t want to let themselves or anybody down. It’s like, I’m doing everything I needed to do, but things aren’t going as planned. I don’t know what else to do, but I got to make it happen.”
Hepler also thinks the series is a bit safer than motocross. “Maybe you’re not quite feeling it in a section, and you have four to 10 miles to go, so you have time to maybe be a little safer in this section or get a little more wild over this hill,” says Hepler. “So, you have a lot more time to make up and lose ground. That’s why I think it’s just a little bit safer. You don’t have all the fans there in the crowd that may put that extra pressure on you that you want to perform.
“Another thing that’s different about motocross and supercross is that you can gauge your speed by whoever you’re banging bars with, but in National Enduro you’re mostly off by yourself.
“The Lumberjack that I did [last] year there was no cellphone service either, so you didn’t have a clue where you were all day,” says Hepler. “Then at the end of the day they’re like, ‘You got second.’ If you looked at where I was maybe after the third or fourth test, it’s like, I was winning and I didn’t even know it. Maybe I could have tried a little harder on the fifth and sixth and been a little closer to the lead. So, that makes it a lot easier if you can see the times after every test because then you’re like, ‘I got a little lead, so I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.’ That makes it really tough when you don’t know all day long what’s going on. So, you got to push as hard as you can, but one fall can diminish what you did the first nine miles. So, you just have to find a happy medium, I think.”
Something that Hepler is still working on getting used to is reading arrows. Some riders read arrows and others read trail. Hepler does a bit of both.
“I think you’ve got to do a little bit of both,” says Hepler. “I know Indiana there were a lot of turns and stuff, real quick turns, so you’re not even looking at the arrows because the turns were coming up so quick. I think it just depends on how open the woods are, whether you can cut some of the corners off and make your own lines a little bit compared to other places where you’re kind of stuck in the same groove the whole day. Obviously, the fastest way is just, there’s the trail. Just go as fast as you can. You don’t even have to look at the arrows. But there’s places where you could maybe take a little bit better line than where the main groove was.”
Though he rode several of the rounds during last year’s series, Hepler is looking forward to the new places and new terrain the 2022 AMA National Enduro Series will bring.
“People talk about the one in the upper Peninsula,” says Hepler. “That’s pretty cool. I’ve never been there. I think it’s more the other way. Living in Pennsylvania, I don’t see that much sand, so that could be a harder, more difficult race. Especially the first one coming up I know is a little sandy. Then I’m not going to go south all off-season like some of the guys. Hopefully I do enough riding at home and ride sand a few times here before the race that I’ll be ready to go and not behind the eight-ball.” CN