Share

Interviews

Downtime with Rachel Atherton | Interview

Well, if you’re winning all the time. Alan Milway (Atherton’s coach) wrote a piece about complacency being one of the biggest dangers for any athlete.

I’m smiling because I knew that was going to come up.

Did you?

It’s the most asked thing and I don’t know what to say, because… we’ve just got to wait and see. I don’t feel at all like I’ve got complacent. Every year that you race you race to win and you think that you’ve done everything you can. Sometimes you really have done everything you can, sometimes it turns out you haven’t. But every season you go into it thinking ‘right, this is it, I’m going to absolutely smash it’ and obviously you can tell. For me it’s been amazing the last couple of years have been injury free, which has made such a big difference, and now this is another year on, and the training carries through, and you build and build on it. I feel like I’m just getting going and people are asking me how long I think I’ll race for. I feel like I’ve just figured out what to do and how to be good.

You see it as you’ve actually got to the point where you’re just getting going, you’ve got it figured, and you’re really enjoying it still?

Yeah, and when you have a good year you definitely feel confident and stuff, but all anyone ever says is that everyone else is obviously coming for you now, and that’s all I think about really. I’m not ashamed to say that most of my motivation comes from the fact that I know the other girls are, like, going for it, and they want to catch me up, which happened last year towards the end of the season. They all get real fast toward the end of the season and I kind of reach a plateau.

Are you calculated when you’re riding?

Yeah, I think. The last couple of years I’ve got injured so much and I learned, I was like ‘right, it’s not worth it’. You add up the risks and now I know how to race safely. Not saying that I don’t let it hang out a little bit but I almost know how much I need to do, like how fast I need to go to win, and it’s interesting because you can really see that at the races where it’s been a bit up in the air and I’m not quite as confident, or the weather conditions change or something, I’ve ended up winning them by miles. Then the races where you’re like ‘I’m feeling good here, I’ve got this covered’ it’s always real tight with the margins, so that’s quite interesting really, because you learn. I know how fast I can go without risking too much.

How dangerous do you think it is riding at your level?

I think it’s f–king dangerous.

Haven’t you just said you’ve struck a balance, where surely you’re not going to be killing yourself all the time?

Yeah you have to because at the level we are at, and the speeds everyone’s going – everyone’s getting faster and faster all the time, but we really have only got the same bodies as we’ve always had, and especially the girls. We’re getting so fast and not really getting much stronger and so you think that there’s going to come a point where you think ‘something needs to give here’. Like now I feel I’m riding the best I’ve ever ridden, I feel really comfortable and really confident, and when I ride with the boys and stuff here at home on our tracks that are pretty real and pretty gnarly and I’m not really going much slower than… obviously slower than Dan and Gee… not much slower than the other lads, and you kind of think, compare that to how much stronger they are.

I asked Brownie earlier what the difference is like between his start at Atherton Racing and now. There are now a lot of staff employed (13 salaried via Atherton Racing).

Sometimes I think how lucky we were to find Brownie. You couldn’t have a better person, and he’s so invested in us and the team and everything, it’s as much his life and passion and baby as it is ours. Sometimes it blows my mind how much he gives.

It seems similar for everyone who works for you?

Yeah it is, and I guess that’s what you need isn’t it? Everyone plays such a big part. Brownie’s just lush (laughs). We all clap every time he comes into a room.

Brownie was saying that before he started you were just running everything yourselves, with a little help perhaps?

No, it was just us really.

That’s a ton of pressure, right?

It got to a point where Gee started winning a couple of World Cups and Dan was obviously oldest, and Dan’s results were suffering because everything came down to him; he drove us to the races, it was all up to him. He couldn’t give it 100% because if he got hurt, what could we do? Like I was saying before, everyone having a role: Gee’s role was he was very good at the business side of things, so that fell to him a lot, and Dan’s role was the doing side of things, and the track building and stuff. I don’t know what mine was (laughs).>>

Share

Newsletter Terms & Conditions

Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy.

Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions.

production