Ian Stark being transferred to hospital closer to home

Ian Stark is currently being taken by ambulance to Borders General Hospital in Melrose, to be closer to home while he recovers from a brain bleed.

The Olympic event rider has been recovering in the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, after suffering a brain bleed on Sunday, 9 August shortly after judging at the Dublin Show.

Ian, 55, was driving to a teaching session near Pembroke when he was overcome by a blinding headache, and called himself an ambulance.

His daughter, Steph told H&H today that Ian is feeling much more comfortable and looking forward to being closer to home.

“Doctors haven’t established the cause of the bleed yet — they will do further tests in a couple of weeks, but it could be that they’ll never know,” she said. “About 15% of cases are apparently never resolved.”

Steph explained: “He still gets bad headaches but is getting up and about more — he managed to walk outside yesterday and enjoy some of the sunshine with mum, but he gets tired if he does too much.”

And doctors believe that Scottish event rider Ian Stark — who during his illustrious career won four Olympic silver medals — will also get back in the saddle.

“If the next batch of tests are ok, he should be able to carry on pretty much as normal — they think he’ll be able to ride and take long haul flights and so on,” continued Steph.

“He does fly helicopters and small planes but we’re not sure if he can continue to do that.”

The key for Ian now, said his daughter, is to take his recovery slow.

“It’s going to be a long process — he won’t be able to do much for a while and that’s going to be frustrating for him,” said Steph.

“But he’s had quite a fright, so I hope he’ll be sensible. He was rushing around too much before this, and he has probably realised he needs to address that.”

Steph, who is expecting a baby in a month’s time joked that her baby should hurry up and arrive so her father could look after it, which would help him to recover slowly.

“It would kill two birds with one stone — I’d have a great babysitter and Dad wouldn’t be able to leave it so he’d have to stay put!”

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