Blog
A Legacy of World Championships
04 September 2025
Words: Richard Cunynghame
It was 2008 in Val Di Sole, Italy that the Atherton's World Championship ball started rolling. What a fairytale it was, a first World Championship win for both Gee & Rachel on the same day. That was just the start...
Gee went on to take another title in 2014 in Hafjell, Norway. Making him one of only seven male riders that has multiple World Championships to their name, something that is not lost on him, “To become part of the small group that can say they have been World Champion a couple of times feels amazing. It’s an achievement I’m super proud of and has been a defining part of my career.”
Rachel went even further, Pietermaritzburg - 2013, Andorra - 2015, Val di Sole - 2016 and Lenzerheide - 2018, brought her total up to five, indicating how much of a focus it was for her, “Being World Champ was always something special. It’s funny, winning the World Cup overall is ‘harder’ because of the consistency needed all year but World Champs is something else.
To ride so free for that one run, I loved it, I thrived off the pressure. My last win in 2018 was by nearly ten seconds, that run felt insane and so free. I remember thinking I can go as fast as I possibly can and want and I’ll either break both my legs or I’ll win. There was no thinking of the overall, no thinking of the next race, it was just 110% commitment and for me that’s what Worlds is about and why I think it should be at the end of the season so riders can go full gas, all out and not worry.”
Only five years after Rachel’s last win, the Atherton name was back at the top of the World Championship podium, “Seeing Charlie (Hatton) win and on our bikes was so surreal. It was an insane day, seeing Dan Brown and the engineers all there, how happy and crazy they were, after all the hard graft and sacrifice, it was so insane and still doesn’t feel real.”
"I remember feeling more buzzing and happy when he won than whenever I won in the past. To have achieved that success with the brand so early on, it was a big ‘told you so’ to everyone that thought we were crazy. It felt amazing to take on the biggest brands in the world and put our bike at the top, proving to the world that these bikes are something special.”
Charlie Hatton’s attitude to what he has achieved is characteristically mellow, “I never really had a focus or goal, it was just a very natural progression for me. I wasn't a kid at eight years old thinking ‘I really want to be a professional mountain biker’, it was just literally what I did, day-in day-out. Looking back 10 years, I probably wouldn't say I would have won a World Championship title and be racing World Cups full time now, so yeah, it's all been a bit well mental really. “Crazy crazy feeling when I won. It was probably a couple of months after that the realisation hit that I'd actually done it. I still smile about that day every now and then, when I get a little reminder and it's always a nice little pick me up. “I never really put a focus on results. I just always focus on my performance. If I perform as best as I can, that's all I can do. So now if I'm the best I can be, well I can win.
It just proved to myself that anything can happen and you have to believe that you can do it because well it has happened. Probably before I thought it was such a far reach to get and when it actually happened, it was such a shock to the system because I never really thought about it. “It's very nice to add another title to the Athertons’, especially riding their bike. It's a pretty mad story, former World Champions make a bike brand and then they're breeding future World Champions. That's a pretty cool status for them to have.”