The Athertons’ ride started when Dan, then 15 and the eldest of three siblings, first took to the BMX tracks around their home near Exeter and encouraged his brother, Gee, and sister, Rachel, to join in. A decade or so later, on 1 June 2008 in the Andorran resort of Vallnord, four Mountain Bike World Cup races were held and the Athertons won three of them.
The family’s assault on the sport has continued ever since, with new fronts opening this year as they launch their own brand of bicycles and a bike park near their Welsh base.
Unlike many stories of sibling sporting success, there is no pushy parent involved in this tale. “It’s purely down to our older brother just nurturing us into it,” says Gee. “He had this drive and this passion. I don’t know where he got it from, but he had this will to give everything he could and to push as much as he could to get us to this point.
“He seemed to have this plan as to what we needed to do and how we needed to get there, and me and Rach, we were just happy to go along with it. It’s this drive he had and he instilled into us, and we all seem to have this similar passion and this similar will to do well.”
Dan finished third in the four‑cross World Cup rankings in 2008 and has gone on to concentrate on enduro events and masterminding the various Atherton enterprises; Gee won the overall downhill World Cup title in 2010 and the world championship in 2008 and 2014; Rachel and the Frenchwoman Anne‑Caroline Chausson stand as the greatest female downhill mountain bikers of all time. Rachel has won the overall World Cup title six times, more than any other woman, and the world championships five times, doing the double in three of the past four years – “Anything less than that again is going to be a failure,” she says of the coming season – and faltering in 2017 largely because of injury.
“Going into last season I felt really behind and having that doubt and that fear of not having done enough really makes you work hard,” she says. “I’m by no means ahead of the game any more. The other girls have caught me up and it’s a hard battle now to take that win.
“Everyone’s pushing each other and you need that to stay motivated. Because you do get a little bit complacent when you win a few times and you think, ‘I’ve got this under control.’ Then you’re beaten and the fire comes back up.”
The runner-up to Rachel in the World Cup and the world championships last year was Tahnée Seagrave, a British rider eight years her junior with whom she has an unusual relationship that started when the young pretender was a child and Atherton already a champion and role model. “I can remember her as a young girl and she’d send me drawings she’d done,” Rachel says. “She’d draw dragons and send me notes and now we’re battling on the World Cup stage. It’s crazy, really mad.”
Last year Seagrave described her rival as “the best mountain biker of all time”, but expressed frustration at her high profile. “It’s hard when you’ve got someone at the top who’s been there for such a long time. I feel that other people’s talent goes unnoticed,” she said. “It’s a shame. Because Rach has been dominating for so long, she’s the one people are looking at. In the men’s there’s none of that. Credit is given where it’s due.”
“It’s a grudge match between me and the other girls,” says Rachel. “I’m not giving in, not giving up and they’re fighting to knock me off. It’s good for all of us. We’re all very competitive. We might not be the friendliest bunch towards each other – there’s not much love lost there, it’s very fierce competition – but that’s good.”
There is an added subplot to this year’s World Cup, which begins in Slovenia next Saturday. The pressure on the Athertons will come not only from their rival racers, but because they will be riding their own bikes for the first time. The new company, cofounded with the former Dragons’ Den investor Piers Linney, is using new manufacturing technology with lugs 3D printed in titanium, allowing them to be personalised to the dimensions of the rider. For the enterprise to be a success they need their professional riders to deliver success once the races start.
Dan says: “It’s amazing how quickly athletes are forgotten, in any field, and probably mountain biking is quite a nice one compared to something like football where the turnover is so high. So almost definitely, the success of the brand relies on how well Gee and Rach do. We will sell bikes on the back of what we’ve done in the past, but you have to be current. If you’re not current, then you’re nothing.”
Talking to Rachel, as the months of testing come to an end and the time nears for her to prove herself once again, it is clear that this pressure is not entirely unwelcome. “We’re going to turn up at that first World Cup and all eyes will be on us in more than the usual way, but something I’ve always done well is perform under pressure,” she says.
“I’m a big believer in, not so much a positive mental attitude, I always believe the opposite. The more you doubt and the more fear you have and the more pressure you’re under, the harder you focus and concentrate and the more you step it up and bring it.”
The Athertons have always chosen to remain together, despite offers from rival teams and inevitable sibling rivalries. Gee says: “Me and Rach get on really well and we’ve always been really close but we’re always bickering and fighting. We’re always falling out and arguing about stuff, but it’s amazing to do a job like this with your family. The support that Dan’s given to me over the years has been amazing as well. When I’ve hurt myself and been in hospital, he knows what to say. He knows when to tell you to toughen up and stop being soft, and he knows when to tell you: ‘You can chill out a bit now, you’ve had a bad weekend.’”
Rachel is 31, Gee three years older. It is 22 years since Dan first tried his hand at BMX. With the bikes, the bike park and the racing team they intend to remain involved in the sport after they stop racing themselves. All three have suffered enough injuries to know they will not necessarily be able to choose that moment. There is a telling quote from a press release in 2010, after Dan had fractured two vertebrae in his neck and the year after Rachel had a devastating head-on collision with a pick-up truck, when Dan Brown, the team director, described the orthopaedic hospital in Oswestry, not far from their base, as one “the Athertons know well”.
“I didn’t sleep for three months because of the pain,” Dan says. “I remember when I did it I would make videos at night because I couldn’t sleep, saying: ‘Never put yourself back in a situation like this.’ Inevitably, to be doing it in the first place I’m not that type of person. You forget, and time makes you forget, and you just slowly slip back into it. It’s surprising how many people have broken their necks and just carry on.”
There is little talk of retirement at present, the sense instead being of a group re-energised and reinvigorated by the season’s fresh challenges. Gee says: “I’ve definitely thought of stopping a few times, when you have an injury and you’re there on the floor and you think: ‘Not this again.’ But I still really enjoy it. When I’m at the top of the race I’m still getting those nerves and those butterflies and thinking: ‘This is game time.’ And as long as I’m feeling that I think I still want to be racing.”