Issue 142 Pete’s Pro’s: Rachel Atherton

Pete takes in laps and baby naps with Rachel Atherton on her home turf.

Of all the routes I’ve travelled to go for a ride with those who make their living from riding push irons, few are as familiar to me as the run that passes Dyfi Bike Park. Be it along the Ruthin-Mold-Chester axis or from the Aberystwyth direction, this part of the world is where I grew up. I can even recall a time where I’d pass through Pantperthog en route to climb Cadair Idris without the idea of bringing a bike even crossing my mind. This part of Ceredigion is where I cut my teeth as both a mountain biker and a car driver. Narrow and winding being favourites in both aspects, naturally. Ironically, for the former, the real explosion in mountain biking in this part of Wales happened after I’d left for Scotland. 

It’s fair to say that some seriously industrious individuals have made mid and north Wales a veritable Mecca for mountain biking, and I’m in this neck of the woods to visit one of its most decorated members. Mention the word Dyfi and there’s no real prizes for guessing which fast rider I might be referring to. It’s going to be one of three, really, isn’t it…?

Rachel Atherton is easily one of the greatest racers in the history of downhill. When you think of the greats, you think of Peat, Chausson, Gwin, Hill, Vouilloz, Minnaar… A list dominated by men. Even a cursory glance at Rachel’s career puts her well above most of these. Only Chausson has her covered for World Cup wins, something that, as you read on, you’ll find out is still a driving force for her. 

Today’s ‘ride’ will be a very much a different beast to the usual ride and chat with a fast rider. My prying questions are just some of the many things Rachel has to contend with today, not least her young daughter Arna, as she is also in the midst of helping to run a bike park, a bike brand, and building towards a potential return to world-level competition. No mean feat. 

Uplift for two

We’ll be doing shuttle runs of Dyfi Bike Park with the entire place to ourselves. No need to fear about battling the double black runs with the possibility of some lunatic careering into the back of me like my one and only previous visit. Uplift will be time for chat and the downhills will mostly be for doing my level best to keep one of the most successful racers in sight, even if this is as close as I will ever likely get.

High on the hill after the first shuttle we opt to take a cruisey run down and get a feel for conditions before we get up to speed and start committing to features. I’m already sensing that Arna’s requirements are going to dictate the day, so there’s very little faff. I get the feeling there might not be faff in any case and we’re soon off and moving. The cloud is low, hanging in the tops of the tall pine trees that are typical Dyfi. Thankfully the windsock lies flat as we approach the first turns of Fifty Hits. I am doing a decent job at this point of keeping tabs until Rachel hits a bermed chicane, coasting around the downhill right-hander before leaving her tyres struggling to stay on the rim in the left-hander. Immediately I’m a good ten bike lengths away and wondering how a simple drop of a shoulder generated that much speed.

I reach the next crest, met by a wry grin. Clearly the love of riding bikes fast hasn’t waned one bit. But again I’m sensing there’s more to the speedy run down the hill than just that love. “I just can’t relax…” We crack on. Knowing Arna is at the base of the hill is speeding us back. We meet Rachel’s mum Andrea and Atherton Racing’s Gill Harris at the café, both trying their hardest to get the wee one off to sleep, but having no luck. Rachel’s mum fires the baby sling on and the little one is soon comatose. The magic touch. Rach seems visibly more relaxed. “We can just ride bikes now,” she beams. 

Even within the confines of Dyfi Bike Park, Dan Atherton and his build crew have been busy and there are three full trails on top of those that were here the first time I visited, so we’ve plenty of options. We opt for the more mellow ones, even if these are ‘Dan Atherton mellow’, so not actually anything close. This is Rachel’s bread and butter. She’s confident she won’t need to travel to get up to speed on her downhill bike. Everything she needs to get race ready in terms of time on the bike is, no exaggeration, out the back door. 

Making adjustments

With a couple of laps out of the way, we head back to the café where Rachel makes a beeline for the sleeping Arna. We take the opportunity to grab a spot of lunch, which gives me a chance to see how Rachel has dealt with the transition from being an elite athlete to a mum – two things that are wholly opposed to each other when it comes to where your priorities lie. Rachel is the first to admit that sometimes you have to be ruthlessly selfish to achieve any kind of major sporting success, but also adds that the transition is still ongoing, and might always be. 

With Arna all of three and a half months old, Rachel adds that she’s only really just realising now what it means to have a child. Before then, Rachel knew fine well that you needed to be selfish to be a successful racer and is happy to admit that she was good at it. Nothing would get in the way of her performing; everything was thought through, every decision, whether at home or at the race, would have an effect on the performance, so it would be tailored to that performance. “Now though, even with two hours’ sleep a night, you have to get on with it no matter what. It’s been hard to adjust, but while I have thought about it, I am so far away from race fit, the two things seem quite incompatible right now.” With that though, Rachel muses that she doesn’t know what it will take to win races while looking after a baby, but I sense she’s going to relish the challenge. She’s not talking about just getting back to racing, there’s the fire there that needs to win again. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet, though,” she laughs.

The return to World Cups is certainly something Rachel has her eye on, but it’s far from the dead cert that everyone assumes it will be. More a personal goal than anything. “Can I be that strong and fast and fit again, you know?” In many ways, she says, having an injury, certainly from a physical perspective, is similar to having a baby. All the fitness and strength goes. Injuries, she says, usually have an end point though… And while she’s clearly loving being a mum, she’s no idea how she’ll have the energy again to race at that level.

I suggest that maybe nobody has returned to World Cup downhill after having a kid (I think I’m right there), and mention Catharine Pendrel’s return to World Cups. “Those cross-country girls are mental,” is the response. “At the time I thought, that’s so cool. Now, all I can think is how ridiculous an achievement that is. I think she’s now retired, but I don’t think anyone realises that, one, how full-on being a full-time athlete is, and two, the toll having a child takes on your body.” Rachel grumbles at the thought of being asked the throwaway question that is ‘are you going to go back to racing’, without people really realising what it would take to do that. “Physically and mentally, it will take everything I’ve got.” That said, Rachel’s eyes light up when she discusses just how tantalising the prospect of returning to racing would be.  

Split personalities

On the subject of racing, when pondering the massive rise in both levels of participation and skill in women’s riding, there’s certainly one phrase that gets Rachel’s back up, which is that it was easier to win when she was racing. She quickly follows that by hyping up anyone who steps up, be that at a bike park or at a race. Just being there will force the rest of the field to step up, and that, in itself, is awesome. No arguments there.

“When you win a lot, everyone assumes that it’s easy.”

Not that I’m going to argue, but she’s adamant that racing World Cup downhill is hard – even for the most decorated racers ever. “You just push yourself to do it.” Rachel even states she can’t understand how her perfect season happened. “You set out to win every race, sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t.” Looking back, she’s convinced it was a more perfect season than the race results alone would suggest. It was a mechanical-free season too. “It’s mad really…”

Sticking with the racing theme, we look at perception of the athlete and how people see them from the outside. “How many Rachel Athertons are there?” I ask. “Oh, it’s like Jekyll and Hyde. I’d guess about five… At least two, if not more.” Not that it surprises me but Rachel suggests that as an athlete and racer, anyone is going to have two personalities. Those two personalities, she adds, are as key to being successful as the selfishness is. In fact, they go hand in hand. “Now I have a kid, I guess you can add another personality to that list.”

Being aware of the person you become is important, she adds. What’s harder is trying to work out which one you are normally – whether you’re the out-and-out racer who slips into being the ‘normal’ person, or vice versa. “Putting on your game face, no matter what, is critical to success.” She mentions the Mont-Sainte-Anne round in that perfect season, when her grandad passed away the day before the race. That game face is what helped her go on to win that weekend. 

That person, that game face, is often what many people will meet at a World Cup. The throngs of people at Fort William, for example, who crowd the various team pits shortly before qualifying, or finals, in the hope of meeting their idols, actually meet the person who is going to work. That work being a raucous four and a half minutes of calculated risk, and the results of getting it wrong can be life-changing. So, next time you think your favourite rider is a bit stuffy and arrogant on the way to the chairlift, maybe cut them some slack. “You’ve got to be able to compartmentalise it, distance yourself from certain things. Social media being chief amongst them. If you pay too much attention to that, you’d be in bits.” Rachel recounts a tale of their ex race psychologist who suggested that ‘Rachybox’ is the racer – the person there to do a job. ‘Rachel Atherton’ is the person you’d meet if you ran into her in the street. “Sometimes it’s not all that straightforward,” she adds, “sometimes you might get the people mixed up, and go into babysitting mode at the top of a track. That’s not ideal.”

There’s always work to do

“We launched the bike park and the bike brand in 2019, and I raced that season. That was the dream. Make our own bikes and race World Cups on them.” She counters that by saying that after winning the 2018 World Championships by a massive margin, she did consider whether that would have been the time to hang up her racing boots. She certainly felt that wasn’t a possibility with a bike brand to her name. “How can I not race on our own bikes?” Fast forward to Fort William the following year, almost a complete bike change during the race weekend, followed by a win. “It usually takes a year to get up to race pace on a bike, and I don’t think I’d done more than one run on the same iteration of bike, so that win was pretty special. What many people don’t realise is that bike was printed and built that week, for the second day of practice, and I didn’t like it, so I raced on the original bike.” Rachel is keen to point out that she can’t believe she won races on that bike, because the sizing she had chosen then is so different to what she runs now.

To prove just how mad that bike was, Rachel says there was a moment in Andorra where she and Greg Minnaar were both in the Fox pits, and her bike was longer than Greg’s. “Someone has the wrong size bike here, and it’s probably not Greg,” she laughs.

Then the train came off the rails. Feeling like she could have won the overall that year was brought to a screeching halt by a ruptured Achilles in Les Gets. “It was all go with the bike park and the brand, and it felt like there was no way I could be involved.” Rachel had to wait nine months to get back on the bike, then within six months of that, wee Arna would be inbound. Despite feeling the fastest she’d ever been thanks to just riding full runs three days a week at the bike park – in spite of a weak leg, Rachel adds – “Is there ever a good time for an athlete to be expecting? When you’re at the top of your game, you want to keep winning; when you’re off the pace, you want to get back on it. Your work is never done… Getting back to riding after having Arna has been amazing. I rode through my pregnancy, which was fine. Kept it chill, but made sure to ride. I guess it’s less like an injury as you’re physically fine, in a way, but I have found myself falling in love with riding all over again.” Confidence on the bike, Rachel insists, is rising, rather than worrying about being a parent and getting hurt. She knows that may change, but for now, she’s revelling in it.

Onwards, downwards, alongwards

And with that, the chat swings back to racing. We chat tallies of wins: 39 World Cups, 5 World Championship titles and 6 World Cup overalls. “Anne-Caro has 41 World Cup wins. So 42 would be the record. I’m annoyingly close.” The racer in Rachel certainly isn’t anywhere near gone, that’s for sure. “I can hear it calling me…” Her eyes light up when she suggests that the new bike would be a far better race bike than the one she won on. 

She’s quick to add that her input into the bike hasn’t been significant because, well, a gammy leg and a child got in the way. That said, the team at the new Machynlleth HQ are tight and testing happens up the road in Dyfi Bike Park so I’m sure that will change.

I quiz her on what else there is to achieve, and if any of that is away from World Cup downhill. “Oh, there’s loads, but then, how much of it is actually achievable?” Enduro World Series is mooted, although she claims to not be fit enough and might never be. Being naturally strong and powerful is where Rachel shines, but she admits to never having been the fittest. “Even if it’s just for fun, I’d like to do more enduros. Downhill goes to the same venues with the same people, but an enduro would be a step change.”

“I love racing, that’s what drives me,” is the answer I get to my probing as to any visions of achievements away from racing. Rachel’s definitely keen to see events like the Red Bull Fox Hunt come back, maybe even at Dyfi Bike Park. Rachel admits to being nervous at the amount of people at the bike park. but has now definitely got used to dealing with the ‘core’ of riders who come through Dyfi Bike Park on any given weekend. It seems bizarre to think that she could be nervous about meeting other riders, but then that’s maybe just the Rachel Atherton away from the races.

She’s also proud to show both sides of being a mum and an athlete, and is happy to feel like it’s helped give others motivation and inspiration that they’re not the only ones on the struggle bus some days and then winning the next. 

While there may have been less riding than on my previous outings, it was good to see Rachel rip the turns her brother crafted. She’s clearly loving being back on the bike, even if there’s a small human speeding her down the hill. Either way, Rachel Atherton is still faster than you, for sure.

While many might have only happened across Rachel Atherton in a video, at ‘work’ at a race, and formed a perception, I suggest you book an uplift at Dyfi Bike Park. You’ll probably meet Rachel at sign on, feel nervous, and then get to chatting. You’ll realise that the person you’ve seen on the internet only exists on a race weekend. You might be surprised by the person you meet away from that environment. Just imagine how awkward you’d feel if someone came to your work and stood waiting for an autograph…

I am in no doubt that if Rachel Atherton returns to World Cup racing, she’ll do a solid job of going after Anne-Caroline Chausson’s record of wins. Despite the clear impressions I walk away with, Rachel would stress that this is far from a dead cert at this stage though, and there’s plenty to keep her busy in the meantime.