Mountain bikers bid to conquer 'deepest, darkest Wales'

BBC News

7 days ago

Gee Atherton attributes Wales' landscape as the most "impressive and intimidating" for building the Worlds hardest downhill racing track.A former World mountain bike downhill champion, Atherton is co-founder of Hardline – widely regarded as the hardest mountain bike race in the world.Redbull Hardline returns to the Dyfi Valley in mid Wales for its eleventh year on 26 JulyThe event see's the top female and male riders from around the world battle it out over two days to become the Hardline winner.Last year Irish World Cup racer Ronan Dunne took the win and will be looking to defend his victory again this year.Along with his brother Dan, Gee Atherton designs and builds the track each year and also participates in the race, which he won in 2018 after a few unlucky years of mechanical faults on the track, had prevented him from finishing the race.
"Every year I would be there and I would be close and either mechanicals or crashes or injuries," Gee Atherton said."I realised I was almost pushing too hard and I wanted this win too much and I almost had to kind of step back and calm myself down and think about it slightly differently."I managed to get my head around it and managed to take a win but it's not an easy event to win by any means, there's very few people that have won it multiple times."The event is often regarded as the hardest course in the World with only the top athletes invited to take part each year.The event has one competition in Dinas Mawddwy, in Wales and one in Tasmania, with the Welsh clash known to be more challenging than its counterpart race."I mean, we've been all around the world riding and training and racing and looking for venues for these kind of events," Atherton added."And, you know, we've never found anywhere as impressive as intimidating as where it is here in Wales."I think it's that unique kind of feel you can only get from when you're in, you know, deepest, darkest Wales."Everything from the climate, the venue, the mountain, you know, everything is terrifying. So it's the best spot in the world for it."
A competition so extreme, it must be difficult to test its safety?Mountain biking at this scale, built to test the very top of the worlds talent can only be tested by the riders themselves, as the only people with the skillset to complete the course.It may be the only sport in the world that the guinea pigs are its own professionals right in the heart of a World Cup season.Professional World Cup brothers, Dan and Gee will build and test the course before inviting other riders to test before the competition gets underway."It's difficult really, Dan and I, we've got this kind of agreement between us and we know how each other works and I'll suggest something and he'll say no that's too far, or that's a great idea," Atherton said."Often he will build something and I will have to test it so there's a lot of trust there between the two of us." I think we work well together, sometimes I'll have to test something that he's built and I'll have to trust that it's going to work 75% of the time it does and occasionally it doesn't."You're building the hardest track in the world, you're guinea pigging some of the biggest features anyone's ever hit on a bike, so it's very difficult to then decide yes this is okay or no we've gone too far you know we have to push the sport."We have to challenge the riders we have to be at that kind of that pinnacle that's forefront of what you can do on a mountain bike so each year the riders turn up and there's a new feature that's bigger and more difficult than the previous years."If you go too far with that, you know, if you push them too far, then the riders can risk getting injured, which, you know, does happen sometimes in testing.
But at the same time, you know, you have to be ambitious. You have to push the sport along. And that's where that balance comes in. And you have to walk that very fine line."The three Atherton siblings are arguably mountain biking's most impressive family,From their own bike brand to a bike park as well as Gee, Dan and sister Rachel's vast World Cup winning records. The three have been in Wales since 2004, with Dyfi Bike Park established in 2010, creating a destination for mountain bikers from all of the world to test their skills."The talent that's developing, that's coming out of this area is incredible, riders onto the World Cup scene with quite impressive results," Gee Atherton said."We've been here a long time, we've developed a Bike Park here in Machynlleth which has helped put the area on the map."It's turning into one of the UK's biggest bike parks and getting busier and busier and it's just this huge mountain of the most unique, intimidating daunting, but incredible fun to ride trails."There's very few places you can find this kind of landscape and this kind of terrain that suits mountain biking so well."