UEC
Ioan Hepburn’s journey to track cycling wasn’t one he chose
For most people, losing a major organ at the age of 13 would be a massive life event, but Ioan Hepburn sees it differently.
The 17-year-old from Cross Ash, Monmouthshire, had been racing downhill mountain bikes since he was eight, wanting to “go fast all the time”, when he crashed before a race and pulverized one of his kidneys.
He was rushed to hospital, where he was told there was no point operating as his kidney “had already been messed up”.
Now 17, he is a national European junior champion in track sprint cycling and junior world champion in the team sprint, with a place in the Commonwealth Games at stake.
But it is a sport he initially refused to take up after being talent spotted at an agricultural show.
Ioan is reluctant to focus too much on his injury. For him it was just something that happened when he was younger, nothing to dwell on.
He had joined the Little Fodders bike club in the Forest of Dean after watching riders pulling off big jumps on YouTube.
“I hated going uphill” he said. “I went straight to the advanced group, so you like take your hand off in the air, learn how to do tricks. I just wanted to copy what everyone else was doing and get stuck in.”
It was at a race on his home turf in September 2021that the accident happened, on a run called Elephant Man that he rode week in week out.
“On the Saturday, the track was really dry, it was running really fast.”
But overnight it rained.
“Sunday morning I was on the start line, first practice run, everyone’s chilled out for the first run, but no, I was there, wanting to go flat out and just sent it.”
Family photo
Ioan knew what he wanted to do from a young age
Ioan fell on a bend that had been dry and grippy the day before.
In a freak turn of events, a tree stump missed his body armour and smashed one of his kidneys.
The first thing he saw after he crashed was the blood pouring from his hands.
“I was never fond of wearing gloves. I put my hands down and all my knuckles and everything were just torn off.”
“Crashes did happen,” he added, but Ioan “definitely knew” that this one was different.
“That time it was definitely a burning kind of feeling coming from myself and I was definitely like ‘ah this is not good’.
“I tried to move but I just couldn’t.”
Family photo
Ioan went straight into an advanced group when he started to learn the sport
The whole family were there that day, with Ioan’s younger sister Bella also competing.
Ioan’s dad Jim had seen the red flag which went up when there was an accident on the course.
“The track was shut and a bit more track was shut and as a parent you’re obviously thinking ‘where’s my child, why’s the track shut’,” he said.
“And then one of his friend’s fathers came up the track and said ‘It’s Ioan, he’s had a quite a bad accident’.”
Ioan was carried on a spinal board to the top of the track to meet an ambulance, with Jim in hot pursuit.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack because he went up in a vehicle and I was running” he joked.
Ioan also remembers it with a touch of humour.
“That same weekend we got brand new kit from the team. I hadn’t torn it in the crash though, they had to get the scissors and cut it off me. And I remember that being a really upsetting moment. And my brand-new helmet had been scuffed down the side.”
Family photo
According to Ioan, his crash at 13 is nothing to dwell on
Ioan’s mum Nanette, who had seen him being stretchered up the hill, stayed with Bella, only telling her later how bad Ioan’s injuries were.
Jim said if the crash had happened away from a race, things would have been worse.
“The good thing about those races is there’s professional medics. I knew full well he’d be looked after better than I could do.”
In the end Ioan spent three weeks in Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital – two of them in intensive care – before he could come home.
Doctors decided there was no point operating as the kidney had already been smashed, and with the artery and veins supplying the blood to the organ already severed, there was no chance it could recover.
For Ioan, worse than missing school and the “horrible” pain as his body recovered was not riding.
“One of the first questions I asked the doctors was ‘When can I be back on my bike?'”
Family photo
Ioan on his first ride after the accident
In the end it would be Boxing Day 2021, three months later, before he could return to the Forest of Dean, and “tootle down” the track where he’d injured himself.
“He [Ioan] told me ‘I want to go down and just not thrash down it and try and remember exactly what had happened’,” according to Jim.
“We weren’t sure how it was going to be when he got back on his bike, but literally first ride out, back to normal.”
Family photo
“I’m a mountain biker through and through” says Ioan, pictured with his parents Jim and Nanette and his sister Bella
A year later and a chance encounter at the Usk Agricultural Show would start Ioan on a journey towards the velodrome.
The former world champion Rachel Draper and her sister Ffion James were criss-crossing Wales carrying Watt Bikes – stationary exercise bikes which measure a cyclist’s raw power – “trying to reach people who hadn’t tried track cycling before”.
At the show, Ioan got the highest score of the day on the bike.
Rachel was “obviously extremely excited” but said her memory of the day was “feeling really frustrated afterwards that we had a really talented kid who just had absolutely no interest in coming down to the track”.
“He was very much ‘I am a mountain biker through and through. You are not going to get me on the track, it’s boring’.”
SWPIX
As Beicio Cymru’s sprint coach, Rachel Draper has transferred her own international experience to helping develop the next generation
A month later Rachel took the bike into Ioan’s school assembly and he got the highest score of the day again, yet still neither of them thought he would be making an appearance at the velodrome any time soon.
But Jim said he “dragged him down there” .
“I think there was an autumn international on down at the Arms Park, and we had tickets to go and see the GLC [Goldie Lookin Chain] in the evening at Cardiff as well.
“So I said let’s just go to Newport on the way through, to the velodrome, and have a day out.”
Ioan still remembers his first time at the velodrome, “walking down the ramp into the track.”
“I was petrified,” he said. “I’d never been in that environment and I was really scared, I guess. I was the first time I ever really felt like that.”
SWPIX
Ioan winning in a senior keirin race beating the national sprint champion at the nationals.
Ioan said the first time he truly realised how much the velodrome meant to him was in his first national championships aged 15.
He qualified for the bronze medal ride but lost, “and I remember crying my eyes out afterwards because I wanted it really badly”.
He’s since gone on to take several national titles, and last month won team gold in the European Junior Championships.
This week he’s competing in the World Junior Championships, where he clinched the gold as part of the men’s team sprint and XX.
He already spends time at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, following the likes of Mark Cavendish and Geraint Thomas, but his next target is representing Wales at the Commonwealth Games.
UEC
Ioan taking gold at last month’s Junior European Track Championships with his GB team-mates Archie Gill, Charlie Holt and Kristian Larigo
Although his path has appeared smooth, Rachel says that same ability to see past the loss of his kidney is what has taken him through this period in his career.
“Any time that things have gone wrong for him, he’s been really good about being just very objective, taking it as a learning thing.
“Don’t get me wrong – he is super competitive and he will be at these races wanting to win.
“But if he doesn’t, he knows that there’s more to come in the future.”