Gee, Rachel and Dan Atherton: The Best Cycling Siblings in the World.

As Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Bradley Wiggins and others proved last summer at the Beijing Olympics, Britain rules the world when it comes to cycling, and not just on the track inside the world’s velodromes. Nicole Cooke is the women’s Olympic and world road race champion, Mark Cavendish won a staggering four stages of last year’s Tour de France and Shanaze Reade, the girl who fell famously when going for gold in China, is the women’s world BMX champion.

Yet the least known but best story of the lot comes in the shape of George and Rachel Atherton, brother and sister, best friends who love and support each other to death, and also fight like cat and dog, and who both happen to be the current men’s and
women’s world professional downhill mountain-biking champions.

To have a British world champion in one sport is good enough. To possess them in both the men’s and women’s makes it even better. But to be sibling world champions, a first in British sporting history, makes this tale of bumps and bruises, adrenalin and accidents, extra special.

They also have an elder brother, 26-year-old Dan, who’s hardly shabby either at downhill, and who finished third in the 2008 world rankings in the four-cross (also called 4X) discipline. All three live together in a cottage near Shrewsbury and eat, sleep and breathe mountain-biking yet in the case of Gee (the name everyone calls George) and Rachel, the family connection makes them an unbeatable team, through thick and thin.

The thick has been very thick. Last year in Italy 24-year-old Gee became the world downhill mountain bike champion two hours after his 21-year-old sister had also achieved this feat.

“I was trying to focus on my last-minute preparations but I could tell she’d won because of all the noise, champagne-cork popping and celebrations when I arrived at the venue,” Gee recalls. “It didn’t hinder me at all. It put me in a very happy place and then I knew I was going to win as well. It was a very special day for us, believe me.”

Rachel, blonde and pretty, feminine and tom-boyish at the same time, nods her head and smiles. “I came to the event full of confidence, even to the point that while all the other girls waited on the start line nervously, I was singing “Take it Easy” by The Eagles. That’s always a good sign. At one World Cup event last year I was singing “Girls Got Rhythm” by AC:DC at the start and all the other girls were telling me to shut up. It’s never pre-planned. It just comes to me spontaneously.”


The thin, conversely, has been painful. Rachel is currently recovering from a shoulder injury after she was involved in a head on crash with a truck in California in January while training. “It was a bad one because I was moving at 20 mph and the truck at 30 mph, so in one sense I was lucky to survive,” Rachel admits. “My face was riddled with cuts and bruises as I smacked straight into the windscreen. Gee was on hand to pop my dislocated shoulder back into place.”
It was a reciprocal action. “Rachel did the same to me a couple of years back when I had a massive fall during a race,” Gee says. “You’ve got to replace it as soon as you can after the shoulder’s gone, although I do recall being a bit queasy for a while afterwards. That goes with the territory. I’ve done my shoulders, collar bones, ribs, and Rachel keeps breaking her wrists. You’re gonna have some falls doing this sport.”

Downhill mountain-biking, if you have not already guessed it, is not for the feint-hearted. The season consists of eight World Cup points-scoring meetings, which takes place in the most mountainous and rugged areas in the world, and decides who is the World Cup champion each year. Then there is a single World Championships meeting as well. Rachel won both last year to become the first British woman to do so.

She and her brothers hurtle down mountains at speeds reaching 70 mph when on ice, and at 40 mph on rough terrain, but with the added challenge of avoiding rocks and boulders, trees and roots. They race against the clock, standing like jockeys on their horses, on full suspension bikes down slopes sometimes dry and dusty, other times wet and muddy, and always so steep and obstacle-ridden that even walking the route would prove challenging. Races can be as short as two minutes, and as long as nearly six, which is more than enough time to give every bone, muscle and joint in the body a good rattling.
It was Dan who first got into BMX, then mountain-biking, followed by Gee. Rachel turned her back on girly lunch breaks at school down the shopping centre, and instead followed her brothers out on the nearby trails. “I just wanted to do what they did, and immediately discovered how much I loved to race,” she explains.

The Athertons, all three of whom are sponsored by Red Bull, now form “Team Commencal,” a self-sustained mountain bike team that dominates its sport, and you soon to get to know when they are in town. “We mostly act as professional riders at events,” Gee explains. “But there are times when Rachel and I will have a screaming row. Dan tends to be the calming influence, older and more relaxed, while Rachel’s fiery and emotional. I’m in the middle, but Rachel and I often go off on one and it takes Dan or our manager to calm us down. You say things to those you love that you don’t to others, don’t you, and you don’t care where you say it.”

Yet the bond is there for all to see. “Dan and Gee are my best friends and mentors, they’ve taught me everything I know, and we have an unbreakable bond between us,” Rachel adds. “We train together, and we’re always looking out for each other all the time. The fact that Gee won the world title last year as well doubled my pleasure on the day.”

Which of the two is the better mountain-biker? It is a question that could cause a sibling fall-out, but not with these two. “Gee’s more skilful and fearless,” Rachel says. “He’ll try anything once, go for it and pull it off. I’d say I’m the better racer because I don’t have any nerves at all and can be more consistent as a result.” 
Both will be looking to defend their titles in September when the world championships are staged in Canberra, Australia, and contrary to a public perception that mountain-bikers are just “dudes,” the Athertons reveal just how professional they need to be.

First, the schedule. The season is from March to the end of September. After two months off they throw themselves into pre-season training, or “putting the fuel in the tank,” as Gee puts it. “We need both explosive power and stamina, upper body strength to withstand the pressures of what the terrain does to you, especially in the forearms, wrists and shoulders, because that’s where much of the strain is felt. You also need good core strength to hold yourself during the crashes, but also rock hard quads and hamstrings to deal with the fact that you are standing for the duration of the race to keep a semblance of control of the bike.”

Rachel mucks in with the boys. “We use a trainer two or three times a week and we always do two major sessions a day, either out on the roads on our bikes, or in the gym. On the bikes it’s all about explosiveness. So there are a lot of sprints involved, but also a lot of mileage for the stamina required. We do around 150 miles a week, which is not a lot for a road racer, but quite a bit for someone who never races for longer than six minutes in a mountain bike race. In the gym it’s all about raw power, so we do a lot of reps to strengthen our quads, hamstrings and arms, involving heavy weights, free weights and also plyometrics, usually with a medicine ball. There’s also a lot of boxing on a punchbag. You’d be surprised how necessary this is because the body takes a lot of pounding.”
The there is the diet, provided courtesy of Rachel who cooks for her two brothers. “My calorie intake is around 4,500 a day, which is quite a lot,” admits Gee, who does not possess a shred of fat on him. “The training burns it all of. I drink gallons of water and juice, and always knock back a sugar free Red Bull at the start of a race.”
Rachel’s calorie intake is not much less, either. “I tend to cook fish, high protein meat, pasta, carbohydrates like potatoes, and all the vegetables you can imagine. It’s like an animal house at home when food is on the table.”   

Both appear very happy with their lot, and not at all embittered by all the publicity everyone in British cycling tends to receive except for themselves. At the moment only cross-country mountain biking is featured in the Olympics, not downhill, which means that the best the Athertons can go for are the world titles and cups they have already won, but they remain focussed and committed.

“We’re very professional athletes who train hard in the winter, compete and travel all Spring, Summer and Autumn, get drug tested every week, and party after each race,” is how Gee puts it. “I don’t think we work any less than anyone else in British cycling.”

That said, the likes of Hoy and Pendleton have the Athertons’ full respect. “They deserve all the credit they are getting because they’ve won Olympic titles and are generating a great deal of publicity for our sport,” adds Rachel, generously. “One day it might be our turn, but until then we’re happy winning our own world titles, and having fun along the way.”
Indeed they are, even if it involves a few rows, a few crashes, and the odd song warbled from the start line.               
For more information go to www.athertonracing.co.uk

The Bike: Explained by Gee Atherton.

Name: Commencal Supreme DH.
Weight: 39 lbs.
Cost: £10,000.
Tyres: Continental Kaiser 2.5: Have a sticky compound to grip well with a super tacky rubber. The tyres get torn to pieces in races. We change tyres three to four times during a race weekend, and bring 30 to 40 tyres with us.

Suspension: Made by Fox Racing Shox, a custom built prototype with adjustable high and low speed compression, adjustable rebound dampening, progressive compression adjustability, and a super light titanium spring at the back with a shock absorber. This is the most important part of the bike, and this takes most of the pounding.

Gears: The bike has 9 gears, with easy gears required for accelerating out of corners, and hard gears for hammering down home straights.
Hubs and Rims: Made by Shimano Saint, they need to be as strong as possible. We change them two or three times per race weekend. They are made of aluminium and super light.
Handlebars and Seat: Shimano Pro, although our own signature Atherton range is coming out in the summer. Rachel, Dan and I worked with Shimano in Belgium on this.

Pedals: Shimano:  As flat as possible, with clips for racing, which keeps us with the bike, but also commits us to a fall if the bikes goes.
Brakes: Hydraulic, with 4 pistons. Heavily pounded during a race, they get very hot.
Adjustable wheel base: We can make our bikes longer or shorter with this device at the back of the bike. A longer bike is better for fast, open courses, while a shorter bike is better for tight, twisty, woodland courses.