Broken femur? Hey-ho!

After sustaining the type of leg break ‘no one comes back from’, Scott Heyhoe was determined to defy the odds and clinch a cyclo-cross top-10

- Scott Heyhoe, David Bradford

It was February 2019, and a decent cyclo-cross season had boosted my confidence for the road season ahead. With a new bike and new coach, I was aiming to gain my second-cat licence while also targeting the BC National Masters road race and circuit champs. My fitness was good, my weight was where it needed to be, and I was in Majorca to ramp up my training. But halfway down a descent, I found myself lying in the road looking at the sky – I still don’t know what happened. My first instinct was to get out of danger, so I went to stand up – and literally couldn’t. Pain like I’ve never felt.

Fortunately a motorist came along and called an ambulance. Later, my Wahoo Elemnt would tell me that I’d hit the road at 25kph. The impact, the doctor told me, had snapped the end clean off my femur. They operated and inserted three screws in my leg. At 53, I was ‘too young’ for a hip replacement – though it was physiologically warranted. As it was, with a bolted-together ball joint, my comeback would take far longer. Two weeks after getting home to Surrey, I was still in a wheelchair wondering whether I’d ever ride a bike again – but something deep inside me told me I would. Even though I’d heard it said, in relation to Chris Froome, that “no one comes back from a broken femur”, I was set on being the exception.